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Additional Tesla Articles- Section 1A

* They bribed White House staff in order to get nearly free taxpayer funding.

* The investors for Tesla paid McKinsey Consulting to write manipulated white papers, for the White House, saying that Tesla was the way to go and then they got McKinsey to staff the Dept. of Energy with their investor’s friends, from McKinsey, so that they would make sure they favored the schemed-up deal through the process. ie: Matt Rogers, etc.

* White House Staff: Gibbs, Rattner, Emanual, Axelrod et al,: All took off from the White House at nearly the same time for fear of getting caught, knew about this.

* DOE staffers: Lachlan Seward and Matt Rogers were ordered, by Tesla investors, to destroy documents at DOE that documented the Tesla transaction.

* The Section 136 law and Federal Procedural Protocol stated that applicants would be reviewed in the order they applied. DOE issued 42 documents stating that applicants would be reviewed and processed in the order they applied. Suddenly, in March of the application process, year, Matt Rogers & Lachlan Seward ordered a DOE press releases sent out which changed the law (illegally) to remove the first-come-first-served requirement in order to attempt to allow them to move Fisker and Tesla to the front of the line. This was done on orders from Tesla’s investors at Kleiner.

* People who already have Tesla cars say the battery packs overheat and the cockpit gets too hot and the car is noisy as all get out.

* When Tesla applied to DOE, they were hand-walked through the process by DOE staff when no other applicants got the same “personal valet service” treatment. This fact helps prove bribery and collusion. Many, many other facts prove this too.

* In a meeting with one of the law firms Tesla hired to leverage the loan, the law firm said: “don’t worry, we control 14 agencies in DC!” That firm paid themselves millions of dollars for a small amount of work.

* When Tesla applied to DOE, they had no actual engineering or factory plans done for the car and showed fake plans, none of which have been used in the factory that exists today. They said they were going to build a factory in San Jose, California when they knew they did not even need one but Goldman Sachs had said they could get “all the money they wanted because the deal was rigged for favors” so “just go for it”.

* Tesla has announced a number of “showcase” famous people hires but once those people did get hired and started working at Tesla, they saw what a rigged company it was, and quit or suddenly “left to pursue other interests”

* Two well known Tesla staff were starting to whistle-blow about Tesla but they were killed in a plane crash right next to Tesla’s offices. Their notes have been distributed to the media, though, by their co-workers.

* Tesla got thousands of order requests from Tesla nvestors and their business friends at Stanford in order to prop up the appearance of orders but, in reality, not so much!

* Tesla investors ordered Chu to rig the tests done by Argonne labs about Tesla to make the results look better than they were.

* Tesla changed the prices on customers AFTER they had left deposits. This is extremely unethical.

* Tesla’s books showed that they have wasted over $40M on “expenses of no value or engineering that had to entirely thrown away”.

* Tesla’s CEO bugged his own employees because of his extreme paranoid personality.

* An ex-co-founder has a copy of the CEO’s hard drive.

* Tesla’s CEO paid the producers of Iron Man to refer to him in the movie in order to manifest his delusional image of himself. He paid 60 minutes to do a story about him.

* Kleiner Perkins put Steven Chu in office by manipulating campaign funding so that Chu could make sure Fisker & Tesla got their funding so the kick-backs would come around into the 360 deal that was set-up. Kleiner staff hid contributions via law firms but “bundled” millions of dollars of contributions and received over $1B in profit options.

* The number of people Tesla said they were going to hire at the NUMMI plant and the number of people that are hired are not quite what we expected. If you look at the cost to the taxpayer per new job created by Tesla you could have paid the mortgage for some taxpayers homes for what it cost the taxpayer per new job at Tesla after they got the DOE money.

* A man named Marty invented the Tesla, Elon Musk took it away from him so Kleiner could use it as an industry manipulation bull dozer.

* They bribed DOE staff in order to get nearly free taxpayer funding by bundling campaign funds via third parties and PAC’s.

* 16 Tesla investor law firms, most with primary offices in Washington, DC managed the hiding, conduiting, bundling and re-cloaking of the money movements in this whole scam guided by staff from Goldman Sachs.

* They took our money and built multiple bragging cars for rich middle-age-crisis males that no family can afford nor that have any value for the average American. There is nothing novel or special about either Tesla car.

* The CEO screwed his ex wife over, his co-founders over and the public over. He paid millions to shut them up but her never paid their friends to shut up so, it is all going to come out now.

* You can buy an electric car that does much more than a Tesla for many, many, many times less money. There is no need for Tesla.

* Foreigners from the middle east own parts of Tesla.

* Tesla staff bribed DOE reviewers to give Tesla good fake reviews in the loan due diligence, when, in fact, in a public side-by-side comparison, Tesla would have failed miserably against all other applicants.

* The amount of money Tesla needs to make compared to the amount of money Tesla has had invested in it compared to the other companies selling electric cars compared to the world car market shows numbers that clearly show today, and at the time of application to DOE, that Tesla had the worst financial upside metrics of any car company in the world. SO why did they get the Loan?

* The Tesla investors worked with Goldman Sachs and LIBOR rigging of loans to get the finders and intermediaries sweetheart fees.

* Intermediaries and “finders” who were friends of the CEO, took huge amounts of public dollars as ” upfront fees” and ran.

* Senators and their husband’s business ownerships got favors from the associated real estate deals from the NUMMI plant for Tesla.

* Tesla took our tax money yet posted numerous job openings on Linkedin, and other sites, to hire “Immigration Paralegals” to hire H-1B foreigners to work for them.

* Tesla is run by the 1% for the 1%.

* Steve Westly is the bundler who threatened Washington officials with campaign fund cut-offs if they did not give his company: Tesla, a nearly free loan.

* Tesla manipulated their books when they applied for the loan in order to look like they met the DOE requirements but a true forensic examination of their books from that time shows that they did not meet the requirements.

* The CEO lied to the City of San Jose about building a factory there.

* The CEO of Tesla has been sued by his ex wife for cheating on his wife and children with loose women.

* It is a Ponzi scheme of a company.

* The CEO has been sued by his Tesla co-founders for engaging in civil criminality. Those co-founders and Tesla staff provided almost all of the data in this website.

* The CEO paid GQ magazine to write an article about how wonderful girls should think he is so he could get more silicon valley hook-ups.

* The two models of the cars have had multiple EMF meters placed in them at different states of operation and been found to have enough EMF to cause cancer. The cars were measured with isotropic broadband EMF meters, Agilent Technologies portable spectrum analyzers, Aaronia calibrated broadband antenna’s and spectrum sweeping multiplex antennas while charging and driving at increments of 20 MPH up to 110MPH. Drivers have reported experiencing sleep problems, heart problems, depression, migraines, seizures, and changes in neurological chemistry. Thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers prove that these EMF ranges do cause these health issues as well as triggering cancer cell growth per cell. Tesla engineers advised that the car should be shielded but Tesla executives said it wasn’t worth the cost and that nobody would find out.

* Steve Spinner, was put in the DOE by McKinsey under orders from Kleiner. He was a liaison for Solyndra, his wife worked for Solyndra, and he was an “early warning system” watchdog for Tesla at DOE and notified Tesla if anybody not in the ” inside group” came snooping around at DOE.

* They were so screwed up in planning to build the car that they were over $100,000.00 IN ERROR, on the cost per car. With engineering this bad, they still got their federal loan and this shows that bribes took place.

* If law enforcement interviews all past and current Tesla staff and investors, they will find multiple validation evidence for every statement on this site.

* The CEO stays up at night writing different fake emails to each of his employees with a few words different in each email to see which employees might be spying on him. Many Tesla staff collect these spy emails as a hobby.

* The CEO has stated that he hates unions and wants to come up with as many robots as possible to AVOID using people in jobs.

More coming….

(These, and more, charges are documented in many third party reports, articles, studies and investigations)

The Senior Immigration Paralegal would be Tesla’s first in-house immigration legal resource and would therefore be responsible for helping Tesla to build-out its immigration law support program. This position manages, oversees and directly assists in handling a large portion of immigration matters in-house, specifically employment-based, nonimmigrant visa applications and permanent residency applications. This position is also responsible for compiling and maintaining various status reports and records relative to immigration related expenses.

•Regularly provide instruction and advice to Tesla employees and foreign nationals on immigration practices and procedures.
•Assist with any problems that may arise relative to a foreign national’s immigration status.
•Assist in the preparation of a monthly status report by tracking immigration costs, volume of immigration files and location of immigration files.
•Create and regularly maintain the legal department’s customized software report to track ongoing immigration matters at all Tesla entities with immigration needs.
•Work with Human Resources to ensure immigration files remain in compliance with state and federal government agency regulations.
•Ensure employee and employer compliance with Tesla’s new immigration policy and procedures.
•Directly handle the recruitment steps necessary to sponsor a foreign national employee for permanent residency.
•Assist with U.S. national’s work-related emigration to foreign countries.

Desired Skills & Experience

Qualifications/Requirements:
•Strong, in-depth knowledge of immigration law, including experience with each visa type mentioned above.
•8-10 years of Immigration Paralegal experience preferred.
•Bachelor’s degree preferred with a strong academic background.
•Strong legal writing and drafting skills.
•Accuracy and attention to detail is a must.
•Experienced professional with great relationship skills, team player, self starter, independent thinker, and has the ability to anticipate the next steps and future issues.
•Ability to work well in a diverse and fast-paced environment with a large and diverse group of people, including Human Resources, Global Mobility, Tesla recruiting, Tesla hiring managers, candidates from countries throughout the world as well as their families.

Eric Holder to bring the hammer down on Tesla! Will nail companies who “confronted a public safety emergency as if it was simply a public relations problem”

In his speech today, Eric Holder stated that DOJ is bringing the pain to all car companies who “….intentionally concealed information and misled the public about safety issues,”Holder said at a news conference in Washington, adding: “Rather than promptly disclosing and correcting safety issues about which they were aware,

“….made misleading public statements to consumers and gave inaccurate facts to members of Congress.”

The Justice Department stated that it is now willing to aggressively pursue automakers under a 2000 law giving it the power to prosecute those who mislead federal regulators about safety problems. Holder said he hopes the case serves as a warning for other automakers (like Tesla).

“The announcement that I am making today, I think, is reflective of the aggressive nature we will take in looking at these kinds of charges,” he said.“I think this is a sign for the industry that we take these matters seriously and that individuals and corporations will be held accountable.”

“Put simply, …conduct was shameful. It showed a blatant disregard for systems and laws designed to look after the safety of consumers.” said Holder

“The Justice Department’s settlement with Toyota should put all automakers on notice: There is absolutely no excuse for misleading the public or concealing information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” Rockefeller said in a statement. “Lives are at risk when this happens. Safety must always be the first priority for manufacturers, regardless of how it affects profit margins.”

The head of the NHTSA, Strickland, recently quit after being confronted with charges he protected Tesla by overlooking bad safety reports.

At about $90,000 apiece, Tesla’s zero emission cars have become a symbol for those in the moneyed class who want to show a commitment to the environment. At the same time, billionaire CEO Elon Musk has emerged as the company’s chief spokesman and cheerleader, encouraging optimistic sales projections and batting away doubters and naysayers who say the company’s shares are overpriced and the cars are overrated. In recent weeks, he’s battled both the New York Times and Barron’s over what he perceived to be negative coverage about the company’s prospects. “I have no interest in an article that debates what we consider to be an obvious point — which is that there is a dramatic reduction in battery costs,” Musk told the Barron’s reporter. “You clearly do not understand the business.” Then he terminated the interview.

Is Musk the next Henry Ford — or Preston Tucker? By getting Tesla (TSLA) into production with a saleable car designed from the ground up, he’s already gone further in the auto business than many people expected (see Henrik Fisker), but Tesla’s stratospheric rise has generated heated debate on websites like Seeking Alpha and Motley Fool as to whether it can continue to expand at its current rate. Here are nine questions for Tesla and Musk:

1. Is Tesla’s stock price the result of irrational exuberance?

As numerous commentators have pointed out, your company’s finances look more like an Internet startup’s in 1999 than those of a traditional automaker. Tesla has made money in only one quarter during its 10-year history, is expected to only break even this year, and make a buck a share in 2014. That works out to a forward p/e of roughly 100.

Tesla could possibly make 35,000 vehicles per year by 2015, but GM (GM, Fortune 500) and Ford (F, Fortune 500) respectively produced 252,894 and 246,585 vehicles during the month of May in the U.S. alone. GM has a trailing p/e of 11.9 and Ford 10.7. Investors have to decide where the best value lies.

2. Can you make money selling cars without air pollution credits?

Behind Tesla’s $11 million first-quarter profit, analysts figure there is nearly $100 million in one-time or otherwise unsustainable items, including $68 million in zero emission credits that you’ve said will disappear by the end of the year. That will leave a big hole in your operating statement. How will you be able to fill it?

3. AutoData reports that Tesla sales declined 14.7% in May. Is this a one-month blip or a sign that the immediate demand by early adopters has been satisfied?

Part of the auto business is fashion; cars with flashy designs or novel concepts get a big initial boost but have a faster decay in their sales curve than more conventional cars with steadier demand. Teslas are high fashion: eye-catching designs combined with unusual powertrains. The sales slump could also be a sign that your company is exhausting the market for super-premium priced cars. The number of people shopping for Porsches and higher-priced Mercedes and BMWs is thin and essentially finite, and Tesla may have already gotten its share. It is also worrisome that you used to brag about your order backlog, but now you won’t release that information any longer. What is going on?

Elon Musk: Electric car competition is key

Elon Musk: Electric car competition is key

4. Can you continue to roll out your distribution model nationwide, given the opposition of local dealers and the barriers of state franchise laws?

Instead of using franchised dealers, Tesla is distributing its cars through company-owned outlets. You argue, reasonably, that “existing franchise dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between selling gasoline cars, which constitute the vast majority of their business, and selling the new technology of electric cars.” But that puts you in opposition to state franchise laws enacted in the 1920s to protect independent dealers. Tesla has won court decisions in Massachusetts and New York but suffered setbacks in Virginia and Texas. Advocates of the franchise system argue that independent dealers are essential to provide inventory buffers and to interface directly with customers.

5. Does it really make sense to build a nationwide recharging network?

Since electric cars have limited ranges, everyone agrees that a network of charging stations is essential to their widespread adoption. Supercharger stations can return most of a vehicle’s range in 25 minutes but cost $150,000 apiece. You currently operate eight supercharger stations, including six in California, one in Connecticut, and one in Delaware, and you have promised to install 200 coast-to-coast by the end of 2014. Won’t the supercharger attendant in Nevada or Kansas be as lonely as the Maytag repairman?

6. Is guaranteeing the residual value a smart business decision?

In May, you announced that you will guarantee to anyone who leases a Tesla that it will have a higher residual value after three years than any other luxury car on the market. That’s nice, but who knows what a Tesla will be worth three years from now? As analysts have pointed out, that just shifts the risk from car owners to shareholders. You could be stuck with a lot of vehicles that are worth less than expected

7. Can you bring down the price of batteries far enough to build a $40,000 car?

You have said you will launch a small electric sedan in late 2016 with a range of at least 200 miles and a price point “half” that of the flagship Model S. That means it will start at about the same price as the Nissan Leaf — around $30,000 — but have triple the range. You said you were “pretty optimistic” that the necessary advances in battery technology are achievable without “any miracles happening.” There aren’t many who are equally optimistic.

8. Every other EV manufacturer is struggling. Are you really that much better?

GM just cut the price of the 2013 Chevrolet Volt by $4,000 to boost stalling sales. Nissan sold only 2,138 Leafs in May. The only electric car that has been made so far that could compete with the Model S was the Fisker Karma, which looked attractive, was powerful, and had a high range. Unfortunately, the Karma was not a success, and Fisker is now defunct.

9. Are you in danger of overreaching?

Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin were both investors in Tesla before its 2010 initial public offering, and that’s pretty intoxicating company. So perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that you are talking with Google about adding driverless technology to your cars. “Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes,” you said in an interview, “and we should have it in cars.”

Personally, I’d be happy if you just continue to develop your cars, bring your prices down, and blanket the East and West Coasts with service centers and charging stations. That way, if you don’t become the next Henry Ford, at least you would be the next Walter Chrysler. To top of page

Google is now in trouble for spying on everybody. Google is one of the biggest “silent investors” in Tesla.

Elon Musk has admitted to the NY Times that his cars are wired to report your location, route of travel, dashboard settings and other real-time use information back to his office.

It is now also learned that the hands free microphone in the cars can be remote activated and also hacked to listen to everything you say in a Tesla.

That’s nice. It is always good to pay $100,000.00 to someone so they can listen and watch everything you do.

Betty Kornen
New Jersey

Silicon Valley VC’s, Goldman Sachs, Batteries and Afghanistan

When investigative reporters found that Goldman Sachs was involved in almost every single one of the DOE money deals, they had to ask why? How much did GS make in, around and through the whole thing? Who was connected to Goldman Sachs and decision makers? Would they really rig a whole market (and a war?) just to get a few TRILLION dollars worth of lithium cornered? Let’s discuss

Historically, the name “Afghan” designated the Pashtun people, the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan. [33] … Other reports show that the country has huge amounts of lithium, copper, gold, coal, iron ore and other minerals.

Did you know that Afghanistan is one of the world’s largest suppliers of lithium? All your electronic devices that use lithium batteries are dependent on it & only a few countries have … cobalt gold ring, cobalt golden age club, cobalt goldman, cobalt goldmansachs Admin. Search for: Recent Posts.

When you look deeply into it, you find that GoldmanSachs is owned by Rothschild, … Afghanistan’s mineral deposits to be worth upwards of $1 trillion and in fact, a classified Pentagon memo called Afghanistan the “Saudi Arabia of lithium. …

GoldmanSachs Director to Join Board of Bitcoin Startup Circle Capturing images of bystanders by zooming in on pictures of corneas (this is huge!) … Well it does not come from Afghanistan . Although lithium is widely distributed on Earth, …

From Contributor: JackieNuls: Did Goldman push us into Afghanistan for the Lithium? Goldman stood to make billions of dollars along with the Russian mining companies, battery companies and electric car companies they represent. Goldman was involved in almost every DOE funding deal and …

Massive lithium deposit found in Afghanistan. … GoldmanSachs fraud, how they cheated investors wi… The Globalist Treat Earth like It’s Their Mafia Em… IRS Fraud: There Is No Law That Requires You To Fi… Federal Income Tax – Why you should not pay;

The New York Times story on the discovery of vast mineral reserves in Afghanistan is astonishing, given the unpredictable political consequences. One is that the Afghanistan could rival Bolivia as the Saudi Arabia of lithium The US US taskforce that is trying to map the reserves of …

Afghanistan, it turns out, is rich in minerals – trillions rich. It’s going to become the Saudi Arabia of lithium, thanks to vast stores of that resource, plus iron, copper, cobalt and gold. … Masooma Habibi, a graduate of GoldmanSachs’ “10,000 Women” program at the AUAF, …

U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Deposits Worth $1 Trillion in Afghanistan; “The Saudi Arabia of Lithium“; Eventually “One of The Most Important Mining Centers in The World”; … And GoldmanSachs will arrange the financing.

Jim Risen has a blockbuster story about a gift and a curse for Afghanistan’s blighted and … gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are … The Board of advisors has Stephen Friedman, AIG crook, GoldmanSachs crook, Federal Reserve …

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most …

… gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed … Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion dollars,” lunch money for GoldmanSachs.

Lithium is used as a thickener in grease, … There are also huge lithium deposits in Bolivia, China, and Afghanistan, … GoldmanSachs Group Inc. and Fortis Investments. These three majors bought in when Talison was still a private company.

Amid all the dark news from Afghanistan, … the cracks. Afghanistan, it turns out, is rich in minerals. Trillions rich. It’s going to become the Saudi Arabia of lithium, they say. Thanks to vast … a graduate of GoldmanSachs’ “10,000 Women” program at the AUAF, founded an Internet …

heraldtribune.com/article/20100617/COLUMNIST/6171039

The Deloitte/Tesla Connection:

Now that the entire California unemployment system online has failed, causing thousands and thousands of people to get evicted, with no end to the problems in sight, investigators look to the source: Deloitte!

The California/Deloitte kickbacks with Sacramento and the associated campaign contributions show why EDD gave the contract for its unemployment system to Deloitte “despite a string of problem projects” across California state and local governments that littered the company’s track record, the LA Times reported late last year. These included: a project canceled after four years by California’s Department of Developmental Services after it figured out the system it paid $5.7 million to Deloitte to develop didn’t work; a project to link California’s court system computers, originally slated to cost $33 million, but canceled because it couldn’t be made to work even after Deloitte pocketed $330 million; a botched payroll system Deloitte developed for the L.A. Unified School System; and a Deloitte-led, botched ERP system development for Marin County, California, among others. California government IT has been very, very good to Deloitte’s bottom line.

Savvy California IT experts are praying that Deloitte’s hand in the California healthcare online system will not pretty much gaurantee failure according to a well-placed Sacramento server consultant. But alas, proving that California’s kickback system is just as corrupt as Washington DC’s. The guy WHO BUILT the COVERED CALIFORNIA Obamacare network, THE IT Director, The H.I.X. TOP GUY, The MAIN GUY: James Joseph Brown Jr.; was just ARRESTED FOR FELONY ORGANIZED CRIME CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST!!!! Just like everything in the Tesla/Fisker/Solyndra scam… everything with these people is about kickbacks, conflicts-of-interest and re-routing of public funds into their own pockets. When James Joseph Brown worked in his previous state position he helped get Tesla and Solyndra tax waivers.

Massachusetts admitted a few weeks ago that its original contract with Deloitte to modernize the state’s unemployment system was “flawed” and allowed Deloitte “to miss deadlines and still charge the state some $6 million more than originally planned,” the Boston Globe reported earlier in the month. Suzanne Bump, the Labor Department Secretary in charge of the contract at the time—who is currently State Auditor—told the Globe she has “no recollection of what was in that contract language.”

It is always amazing how selective amnesia seems to strike government officials whenever they are asked to explain their unexplainable decisions.

Deloitte ran the money for Tesla and “cooked the books” for Tesla, while double-dipping with the DOE to review Tesla’s rigged loan applications, ON BEHALF of THE TAXPAYERS “SUPPOSEDLY” while working with California officials to get Tesla a tax waiver for it’s factory; all the while providing shoddy services while rigging kickbacks… nice work if you can get it. Now let’s see: Which Silicon Valley VC’s have an exclusive relationship with Deloitte and Tesla?????

Andrew D.- LA Times

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Deloitte under investigation for rigging ANOTHER car company:

Deloitte under investigation over Rover Nearly seven years after the collapse of car manufacturer MG Rover, its adviser Deloitte has been placed under investigation by industry regulators.

Deloitte under investigation over Rover Since the car company collapsed in 2005 taking with it 6,500 UK jobs, the AADB has been scrutinising Deloitte’s role as auditor and adviser to Rover.
By Anna White

A complaint was logged yesterday by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) over the conduct of the second largest accountancy firm in the UK and its former mergers and acquisitions partner Maghsoud Einollahi.

Tom Martin, FRC executive counsel referred the case to the Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB) to review Deloitte’s conduct as auditors and advisers to various companies in the MG Rover Group sale.

The complaint alleges that in connection with certain transactions, Deloitte and Mr Einollahi “failed adequately to consider the public interest; the potential for there to be different commercial interests between the Phoenix Four, MG Rover Group and associated companies and shareholders; and the conflicts of interest and self-interest threat in relation to advising the Phoenix Four whilst maintaining client relationships with the MG Rover Group.”

The accountancy arbitrators said the investigation is extremely serious, as demonstrated by the amount of time it took to file the complaint against Deloitte (formerly Deloitte & Touche.)

Both the AADB and Deloitte confirmed the inquiry is into the “transactions” overseen by Deloitte not the audit work.

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It turns out Deloitte is in criminal investigations, many, many criminal investigations, worldwide, here is another:

“The aero group of companies called in joint administrators from KPMG on November 2009 after incurring losses that amounted to $11 billion according to KPMG partner Jim Tucker. Prior to the administration, Aero Inventory has appointed auditors from Deloitte to account for the financials of the group.
The AADB’s investigation will cover the processes of ICAEW and Deloitte in preparing, approving and auditing the financial statements of Aero Inventory PLC and its subsidiary Aero Inventory Ltd. In UK for the financial years ended June 30, 2007 and June 30, 2008, respectively.”

Susan l- NYC

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There are hundreds of criminal charges against Deloitte, here is more:

The accounting firm Deloitte audited Bankia before it went public, and now Deloitte is under investigation after a report from the Institute of Accounting and Auditing (the Spanish abbreviation is ICAC) accused the firm of not acting independently and exposed a conflict of interest that could lose Deloitte its business license.

Deloitte audited the accounts of all the savings banks that were nationalized to make Bankia, and during the 2008-2012 period it billed them 67.22 million euros. It is notable that after the crisis that many of them endured, only Bankia has severed its relationship with Deloitte.

It is a good thing that the ICAC is demanding excellence from accounting firms, because increased regulation and oversight in the financial sector doesn’t mean much if we don’t make the banks do their jobs well.

One has to wonder who allows these people to even exist after all this has emerged?

Deloitte just makes nice powerpoints for big fancy pitches, takes the money, gives out bonuses and then the “partners” “retire” before everybody sees that the emperor has no clothes and everything comes crashing down!

App Authentication Flaw Creates Tesla Motors Hack Concern. Your Tesla can spy on you and drive you off the road on command.

While Elon Musk has admitted to the New York Times that he can spy on any Tesla at any time, personally, the story gets worse:

The Tesla Model S is such an advanced automobile it even comes with its own mobile authentication vulnerability.

According to George Reese, Senior Distinguished Engineer and Executive Director of Cloud Computing at Dell, there’s a flaw in the REST API used in Android and iPhone apps that connect to the car. While he stresses one cannot crash the car with this, one could cause excess electrical usage and force excess wear on batteries.

(ED. At the DEFCON hacker conference, though, other hackers demonstrated a system to take over the GPS which could be used to crash the car by suddenly turn inputs or cruise control bursts. To be safe, have your GPS and all transceiver chips removed from the car.)

He notes that “[a]uthentication happens when you call the /login action with the email address and password of the Tesla customer. This is the same email address and password used to log in to http://www.teslamotors.com. Every customer has one because this web site is where the customer builds their car.” He then cites five vulnerabilities: “It requires the sharing of the user’s password with third-parties (major); no mechanism exists for cataloging applications with active tokens (significant); Only an inconsistent blunt-force mechanism exists for revoking access to a compromised application (moderate); No mechanism exists for revoking the access of a compromised application (major); The automated expiration of tokens in 3 months encourages applications to improperly store your email and password (significant).

By Robert Vamosi

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In another Tesla failure, the doors of the car can be electronically hacked to not only lock you out of your car but LOCK YOU IN YOUR CAR. There are a number of published complaints online about the ongoing lock-in of Tesla owners.

K.G. – Dallas

“THE TEST”: Busted!!!!

We ran a little test with the help of some amazing quantitative analysis students from Boston.

A number of the SOMO writer/reporters were noticing the number of stories commenting that “Tesla was in bed with Google backers”. While there are some forensic facts and factual history which seems to lean towards this assumption, the only hard case evidence is in investigators files, which have yet to be unsealed.

So, just for laughs, we created a web metrics plot of the top 20 domestic news aggregation sites in America. Using commonly available “big data” analysis software we plotted a month’s worth of news coverage for all domestic stories with a high readership. You, or your paper, can try this too.

Then we trolled one of Tesla’s PR staff about covering up the November fire. Of course, as Tesla staff often do, they went ballistic and fired off the Teslammer PR Machine. (which involves no clear thinking, planning or logic. In most cases; just Elon’s brand of visceral Frat boy dick waggin’)

But we were watching and tracking the web with the same kind of software Google uses on you. It’s all legal, it’s just icky.

First, We were able to document the timing sequence and identities of each of the Tesla shill stock aliases meat-puppet bloggers as they re-percussed their cover story along the web routes to try to convince investors “…nothing is wrong, walk on, nothing to see here.”There are a very specific group of names and routes we were able to track in 4 different “fire-drills” we monitored.

Second, and of the most interest, of all 20 other news sites in America, the only one to put any mention of Tesla above the 2% coverage mark was: Google News!

Everybody else put tornadoes, Syrian atrocity, job crisis, medical alerts and all kinds of actual really important stuff right at the top and in the lead sections, just like you might think an uncompromised media journal might do.

But Google.. ahhh Google, …Google punched any, and every, mention of Tesla to the top section as if Aliens had landed on Elon Musks front lawn or China had Invaded Fremont, California. Google News put it over 2000% higher, or more visible, THAN ANY OTHER PUBLICATION in the US, maybe even the world. Kinda fishy! Who says those Google searches are rigged?

Of course any negative stories about Tesla were dragged to the back page search results, but only on Google, all 19 other papers showed equal mixes of negative and positive coverage. We are going to try a 3 month monitoring now and see what happens. We are shipping the results off to the known agencies investigating the kick-backs in all this.

Kind of interesting isn’t it?

Dj- LAT. JKen- LAS

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HA! Touche’ Now get those college kids to check the whole DOE budget!

DFH-

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Want to make Elon go nuts?

Say “Fire” and “Your girl-friends and ex-wives ditched you because they said you suck in bed” and you will pretty much trigger all of his machismo hot buttons. He is so arrogant he will go off the rails. Did you see him cry on 60 Minutes when the big astronauts said he can’t play with their spaceships? He is the most immature man I ever met.

;-)- Dana

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His whole Hyperloop crap thing was just counter PR to try to stave off the truth about the fires!

Google Inc. is putting its own products first in Internet searchresults and abandoning giving consumers the best outcomes, … a comparison-shopping website said in his prepared testimony that “Googlerigs its results, biasing in favor of Google Shopping and against competitors like us.”

Google‘rigs’searchresults, rivals tell senators. Google competitors such as Yelp and Nextag testify to the U.S. Senate antitrust subcommittee looking into the search giant’s market power that the company doesn’t play fair.

“Google abandoned these core principles [of fair play] when they started interfering with profits and profit growth,” said Nextag CEO Jeff Katz today before a Senate antitrust hearing on the search giant. “Today, Google doesn’t play fair. Googlerigs its results, biasing in favor of …

European Commission: GoogleRigs Online Ads. … that Google shows bias toward its own services when reporting searchresults in certain categories. Of course, when you query Google for anything that has a geographic location, you get a map from Google Maps.

The latest from GoogleRigsResults (@stopgooglefraud). After each deceptively named update, Google’s earnings skyrocket. Why? Rank formula is tweaked until clicks on ads increase, algo losers also have to advertise. island

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — Google Inc.’s chairman defended the search giant’s practices in a congressional hearing on Wednesday, saying the company doesn’t “cook” its searchresults in its own favor and operates in a highly competitive environment as it aims to serve …

Could GoogleRig an Election? … web pages and search engine results from an actual election were presented to three groups of eligible voters. In two of the groups, rankings favored one candidate or the other.

May 27: Eric Schmidt of Google gestures during a press conference that took place at the G8 summit in Deauville, France.AP WASHINGTON – Google has not cooked its searchresults to favor its own products and listings, Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt told a U.S. Senate hearing looking …

Most folks feel comfortable with the searchresults from Google never giving any thought to whether a link is safe or not. The scammers either quickly create websites that are rigged with hidden malware and optimized to rank highly for these breaking events or they will compromise a legitimate website that…

In a surprisingly indignant response, Mehdi accused Google of setting up a “‘honeypot’ attack to trick Bing. In simple terms, Google’s ‘experiment’ was rigged to manipulate Bing searchresults through a type of attack also known as ‘click fraud.’

Topic: Google restricts searchresults (Read 2408 times). How could Google “rig” a system that only reflects our finest and most noble sentiments back at us – mediated by a technocratic priesthood of unquestionable moral authority?

Yes, didn’t mean to suggest that Google actually rigged the results way back then. In fact, their explanation at that time was the same as they do today when various link bombs go off — the search is “reflecting the web.”

Considering this change to the way Google displays searchresults is very much in the testing stage, it is hard to say how important it is for websites replying on search engine traffic for their business. Bitcoin Mining Reaches New Level With $2,000-a-Day Neptune Rig [VIDEO].

Microsoft said Google’s accusations stemmed from the way Bing learns from a user’s search history and that the search giant “rigged” its experiment by using click-fraud tactics to manipulate the results of its research.

Meanwhile, search expert Danny Sullivan said that there have never been any serious allegations of anti-competitive behavior lodged against Google, nor any sign that the search company rigs its algorithm. Could Google be rigging its searchresults?

So far in this election cycle, Ron Paul is 0 – 4, with each primary and caucus giving supporters more reason to claim voter fraud. A Googlesearch using the term Ron Paul election rigged returns over 5 million results.

In simple terms, Google’s “experiment” was rigged to manipulate Bing searchresults through a type of attack also known as “click fraud.” That’s right, the same type of attack employed by spammers on the web to trick consumers and produce bogus searchresults.

“Today, Google doesn’t play fair. Googlerigs its results, biasing in favour of Google Shopping and against competitors like us.” The issue, he said in a separate interview, is subtle and does not affect all Google searches, mainly ones related to buying goods or services.

The whole thing came to light when Danny Sullivan posted an article detailing Google’s “sting operation,” which Bing would later call “spy novelesque” and even “click fraud”. Essentially, Google rigged up some forced searchresults to test Bing…

According to transportation group investigators: ” the fire immediately filled the cockpit and passenger area of the car with toxic post-combustion lithium particles and plastic fire vapors which are known to cause cancer, lung damage and brain damage.” All this death and destruction so some silicon valley VC’s can get their quick profits at the expense of the lives, safety and homes of the public and workers.

Dallas, Texas, 10/07/2013 (ustrademedia) – Leading automobile company, Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) has been in the news for the wrong reasons because some of its cars were involved in battery fires. Tesla may face some major liabilities, if such accidents occur again. They are mainly happening because of flawed design. The cars were termed as “safest on the road” and it is rather ironical that the cars have been catching fires.

There has been speculation regarding whether Tesla needs to recall the vehicles with flawed design. There are a lot of different factors and parameters that will be analyzed before any such decision will be taken.

It is likely that the improper location of the battery and the poor design that has been used in making the Tesla cars is the cause of such accidents. It is still unknown as to what would be the long term impact of using such cars and it is likely that the federal government will set up a committee for investing the same. This news of fires in automobiles has created a major setback for Tesla and it has the potential to mar the reputation of the company.

The company is not sure about opting for an automobile recall; however should they decide to do so, it is a proof that the company is more bothered about the safety of its users rather than focussing on how it can impact the reputation of the company. If the number of such cases keeps on increasing, Tesla can face an extremely tough time and the right action must be taken to sort out the different problems.

It is up to Tesla to decide the right course of action that must be taken. Despite being such a giant in the field of automobile, the recent news has taken the sheen away from the company and it can have huge repercussion on reputation, sales and overall output as well. Tags: NASDAQ:TSLA, Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)

-Sally Murdock: a former newspaper section editor and reporter and is now contributing at UStrademedia. Her work has been published in national business trade magazines, and can be found on wire services, in daily newspapers, in university alumni magazines, on the web, in newsletters.

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Elon Musk says his batteries are “safer than gasoline” but he lies!

His batteries explode, burn and give off lethal powder vapors simply by coming in contact with WATER, AIR or CRASHES! (Cuz no cars are ever exposed to those most basic aspects of being a car!)

Musk was offered other safer energy storage systems when the car was designed by Martin Eberhard but Musk turned them down in order to provide kickbacks to investors who also got DOE money for their battery companies, both of which deals the notoriously corrupt Goldman Sachs packaged up. Toyota and ZAP have been selling more electric cars than Tesla ever will and they told Musk not to use those kinds of batteries but he has his kickback deals he wanted to run.

It is Ok to buy a Tesla but it is ESSENTIAL that you live in an area without one single pothole or bump in the road or anything that you might drive over, or water, or air or anybody else that drives a car, IF YOU OWN A TESLA, in order to avoid having yourself, your family, your car and your house not go up in flames and spew dangerous vapors.
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UNCOVERED:! Tesla’s own government documents, which Tesla authored, which disclose the horrifying reality of their batteries in Tesla Motors own words:

“”Thermal runaway is of major concern since a single incident can lead to significant property damage and, in some circumstances, bodily harm or loss of life. When a battery undergoes thermal runaway, it typically emits a large quantity of smoke, jets of flaming liquid electrolyte, and sufficient heat to lead to the combustion and destruction of materials in close proximity to the cell. If the cell undergoing thermal runaway is surrounded by one or more additional cells as is typical in a battery pack, then a single thermal runaway event can quickly lead to the thermal runaway of multiple cells which, in turn, can lead to much more extensive collateral damage. Regardless of whether a single cell or multiple cells are undergoing this phenomenon, if the initial fire is not extinguished immediately, subsequent fires may be caused that dramatically expand the degree of property damage. For example, the thermal runaway of a battery within an unattended laptop will likely result in not only the destruction of the laptop, but also at least partial destruction of its surroundings, e.g., home, office, car, laboratory, etc. If the laptop is on-board an aircraft, for example within the cargo hold or a luggage compartment, the ensuing smoke and fire may lead to an emergency landing or, under more dire conditions, a crash landing. Similarly, the thermal runaway of one or more batteries within the battery pack of a hybrid or electric vehicle may destroy not only the car, but may lead to a car wreck if the car is being driven or the destruction of its surroundings if the car is parked.

When the lithium ion batteries catch on fire they set the rest of the car on fire. When the batteries are on fire they release deadly chemicals all by themselves. When the Tesla batteries AND the Tesla car are on fire they release a vast deadly cocktail of chemicals that instantly invade your body via your lungs, skin, hair, tear ducts and stay in your clothes. You, your baby in the back seat, nearby observers, first responders and everybody nearby are instantly toxified with a time bomb of poison that make take years to kill you or destroy your health but they will.

Do you enjoy breathing N-methyl pyrrolidinone, ethylene carbonate, ethyl methyl carbonate, dimethyl carbonate, cyanide, and biphenyl and having your brain cells eaten away? Ask Elon Musk on live TV to WARRANT that a burning Tesla does not instantly releases severely toxic chemical vapors! He won’t say it because he knows that the car is a deadly design.

DD-

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At the Tesla Factory in Fremont California, Tesla assembles and tests in battery packs, which cover the entire floor of the passenger section, in a military-class ballistic “BLAST CHAMBER” as shown in photos at:http://lithium-ion.weebly.com

Tesla had previous published requests for patents, now uncovered and published publicly, which state that Tesla felt its batteries had a severe explosion risk and a suspected ability to burn your home down. In spite of Telsa’s knowledge of this hazard, it never adequately disclosed this to buyers.

Firefighters have now confirmed that the Tesla SIMPLY HIT A BUMP IN THE ROAD and the deadly LITHIUM ION Batteries in the TESLA exploded into flames, then, when firefighters tried to put out the fire, the lithium ion batteries which explode in water, blew up some more as the water turned them into a deadly inferno which melted the very metal of the car, as they did with millions of dollars of Fisker cars.

It has been charged that Tesla bribed consumer reporting officials to get their “high safety rating” when Boeing Jets had already proven that the batteries that Tesla uses make Tesla’s deathtraps waiting to happen.

—————————————–Engineer Mark Schrader calls Tesla: “Liars”. Challenges them to live debate on CNN.

Schrader charges that “Tesla knew that Fisker Lithium Ion batteries were spontaneously exploding and nearly always explode when they get wet and that Tesla batteries explode too when wet or damaged in a wreck, releasing deadly toxic materials during combustion or explosion.” Schrader shows that Tesla filed patents, in Tesla’s own name, stating as fact that their batteries could explode with devastating results.

Scrader shows extensive U.S. Department of Energy tests and studies from 5 different DOE national labs which clearly show the toxic, explosive, water-exploding, crash-exploding nature of the particular size, type and use of Lithium Ion batteries in a vehicle traveling more than 2 miles an hour: Deadly consequences were known, and documented before Tesla even got funding.

Mr. Schrader says “Tesla has been using every spin technique in the book and is constantly changing their story on what is happening but the bottom line is: they lied to the public and the stock “analysts”, who are helping them break SEC laws, are telling felony-grade lies too.” Schrader notes that “even though Tesla has had multiple recalls and other fire-on-board incidents, and that Tesla knew of these dangers, they kept selling themselves the batteries because their investors have kickback schemes in the associated battery business.”

THE QUESTIONS ELON MUSK REFUSES TO ANSWER ON LIVE TV-

Some of Schrader’s questions for CNN to ask Tesla during the debate:

“1. How many customers have ever been in a wreck in a Tesla?

2. How many of those cars show burn damage?

3. Was there ever a fire at any of the Tesla plants? How many fires?

4. Why does your patent say your battery’s can cause death and the destruction of a family home yet you still sell them?

5. Why are your batteries assembled and tested in a military grade blast chamber in Fremont?

6. What happens to any of your employees who inhales lithium ion powder? How does your insurance cover them? When factory workers assemble the batteries from raw materials, what insurance covers them? Can these batteries be built from the ground up in California or is that still ILLEGAL because of how toxic they are? These batteries are not out-sourced to China (where you can kill factory workers in the factory process) are they?

7. What happens to any of your customers or fire fighters that inhale lithium ion powder or burning powder combined with burning plastic and aluminum residue? How does your insurance cover them?

8. Did you have any movies or technical white papers about lithium ion battery danger that you viewed prior to applying for taxpayer funding?

9. Which of your investors have a business interest in your battery and battery parts suppliers? Did they file campaign disclosure documents with the FEC? Which of them have a business relationship with EPRI?

10. When you reviewed the Northwest Labs and Battelle lithium ion studies in 2007, why did you not follow their recommendations? When you were told that “the most dangerous thing you can possibly do with lithium ion is pack it in a dense box in a high mass large moving object”, why did that not resonate?”

The way Tesla has the batteries made is WORSE than Apple’s Foxconn disaster.

Workers are suffering deadly toxic poisoning effects that Tesla tries to hide offshore. The lithium ion in the batteries is NOT the same kind of lithium the drugstore has. The Tesla version in the batteries is a deadly toxic mix of chemicals in a fine powder and gas. Workers inhale this and get it on their clothes and die about 10 to 15 years later. Making Lithium Ion cores overseas: it’s the problem that solves itself!. The evidence dies off rapidly. Sad.

Robert- National Geographic Researcher

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OH LOOK, OTHER, DIFFERENT-THAN SEATTLE FIRES IN TESLA CARS. And MUSK said there have never been fires….

Wrong. The incident near Seattle still should be of great concern because Tesla still heavily depends on tax breaks (like the consumer’s $7,500 federal credit) and the sale of emissions credits (mainly from California) to partially subsidize the costs of their electric cars. Moreover, the government has invested billions of dollars in the research and development of new battery technology, all in the name of energy efficiency in order to save the world from global warming. Those based on lithium have gone up in flames in planes, plants and automobiles.

One of these days there will be a fatality, but until then manufacturers dismiss the incidents. The statement Tesla issued about the fire in Kent, Wash. was matter-of-fact and lacked any expression of concern for the vehicle’s owner.

“Yesterday, a Model S collided with a large metallic object in the middle of the road, causing significant damage to the vehicle,” the company response said. “The car’s alert system signaled a problem and instructed the driver to pull over safely, which he did. No one was injured, and the sole occupant had sufficient time to exit the vehicle safely and call the authorities. Subsequently, a fire caused by the substantial damage sustained during the collision was contained to the front of the vehicle thanks to the design and construction of the vehicle and battery pack. All indications are that the fire never entered the interior cabin of the car. It was extinguished on-site by the fire department.”

It almost sounds like Tesla wants an “attaboy” for the brilliance of its safety features and battery design, rather than express how grateful that the driver was not hurt. Whether there actually was a “large” chunk of metal that was struck still isn’t clear from the evidence, but if there was, it’s not a reason for Tesla to be absolved of responsibility. After all, debris is struck in roadways regularly around the country and it doesn’t cause episodes like this. What, for instance, if the Model S had actually collided with an object in the road and it rendered the driver unconscious? Then we’d be talking about a much different result.

Back when Fisker Automotive was still alive and stumbling, their public relations department handled mishaps in a similar fashion. In May 2012 a Fort Bend County, Texas fire marshal attributed a garage blaze to the homeowner’s Fisker Karma, which he had parked shortly before he started smelling burning rubber and discovered the fire. Nevertheless Fisker issued a statement that said, “As of now, multiple insurance investigators are involved, and we have not ruled out possible fraud or malicious intent. Based on initial observations and inspections, the Karma’s lithium ion battery pack was not being charged at the time and is still intact and does not appear to have been a contributing factor in this incident.” The owner was not pleased by the challenge to his integrity.

And after a California Karma fire in August last year, the company said, “We have more than 1,000 Karmas on the road with a cumulative 2 million miles on them. There are more than 185,000 highway vehicle fires in the US every year…No injuries were reported; the vehicle was parked; and the fire was extinguished safely by the emergency services.”

The arrogance isn’t limited to the automotive realm. In April this year Boeing, after a series of “thermal runaway” incidents on its lithium-ion battery-powered Dreamliner, officials announced they gave up trying when it couldn’t find the source of the problem. Instead the manufacturer said they came up with a solution that would both contain a potential fire and vent its heat outside the airplane if another fire happened.

“In some ways it almost doesn’t matter what the root cause was,” said Michael Sinnett, Boeing’s top engineer.

Undoubtedly there are a lot of very smart people who have worked very hard on developing these new technologies. But likewise there have been equally brilliant individuals warning these engineers and entrepreneurs that they are dealing with dangerous materials and chemistry, and that just because someone hasn’t been hurt yet, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

Lewis Larsen of Chicago-based Lattice Energy LLC has consistently called attention to the problems with lithium ion technologies and their tendencies to thermally run away – or, in other words, burn uncontrollably. The practicality problem (other than their immense cost) with the batteries is that when they experience stress – for any number of reasons – it’s almost like unleashing hell.

Part of the bombastic investor enthusiasm stemmed from other superlatives bestowed upon the Model S, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s top score of five stars, which spurred Musk to make sure the media was told the car scored even higher on some safety aspects. And then in May Consumer Reports’ announced the Model S scored 99 out of 100 – almost perfect!

It was all too much too soon for the electric car with a minimal track record. The doubts and questions about lithium ion batteries used in vehicles and planes – and the massive taxpayer subsidization of them – are still valid.

Paul Chesser is an associate fellow for the National Legal and Policy Center and publishes CarolinaPlottHound.com, an aggregator of North Carolina news.

The Tesla story is the second high-profile case this year, the other involving Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, both of which involve incidents with lithium-ion batteries. The cases are shining a spotlight on the use of lithium-ion batteries in transportation and the challenges designers face in minimizing the risks of battery failure. Is this technology robust and mature enough to be used extensively in transportation applications (such as airplanes and automobiles) while not posing any elevated safety risks?

For right now, the main strategy appears to be one of recognizing the underlying failure mechanism of lithium-ion battery cells and dealing with this possible failure through containment

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Does Tesla’s Battery Fire Tempt Boeing to Schadenfreude?

The joke about the mixed emotions when ones’ mother-in-law drives off a cliff in your brand-new-car surely must describe how Boeing feels today watching Tesla defend the lithium ion batteries powering its cars.

Tuesday (while I was writing a nice little feature for the Times about a Tesla S as wedding coach) a similar sedan caught fire in Washington state, a roaring blaze captured on video by a passing motorist who spontaneously opined “Oh, s–t dude, that’s a brand new car!”

He then adds, “Wow, I can feel the heat in here.” That may be the more significant statement which I will get to in a moment.
For now, I want to remind readers that when Boeing experienced two thermal events on Dreamliner batteries in January, prompting safety regulators to ground the airplane for four months, Tesla’s boss, Elon Musk told FlightGlobal that the planemaker’s design was “inherently unsafe.”

Along with others, I’ve been saying that as well. The difference here is that Musk believes his company figured out the secret sauce; more, smaller and more widely separated cells while Boeing was using large, more closely-spaced cells in the Dreamliner.

Celina Mikokajczak at the NTSB hearing on lithium ion battery safety

This is what makes the batteries on Tesla electric cars safer than Boeing’s electric plane, according to Musk. Celina Mikokajczak, an Tesla engineer explained this and more to the NTSB at a hearing in Washington DC in April.

In order to get the airplanes back in the air, Boeing did create more breathing room between the eight cells per battery on the two batteries on each 787. Boeing also constructed a big box it claims will contain any thermal event and vent any fumes. But whether Musk and his clever chemical engineers (or Boeings’ for that matter) have really tamed the beast is still up for discussion.

Lewis Larsenabout whom I have written in the past, is already overheated about the Tesla fire. In a mailing to me today, he writes that the fire “is really a form of thermal runaway” and that far from being the smartest folks in the room regarding lithium ion batteries, the Tesla folks have just been the luckiest.

He wasn’t there of course, but Larsen is concerned that the battery may have caught fire spontaneously because Tesla hasn’t solved the problem thermal runaway problems, nor has anyone else.

Tesla, however, is telling reporters “a large metal object” hit one of the modules on the battery triggering the blaze. This is not a minor distinction as far as Larsen is concerned because he’s telling anyone who will listen that these battery cells go bad without notice and that when they do, they can heat up to nuclear-reaction-like temperatures.

Now, the comment of our citizen videographer, who driving by the flaming $70,000 sedan says, “Wow, I can feel the heat in here,” begins to sound more ominous.

Which is why, Boeing executives may be tempted to feel a bit of schadenfreude now that the negative news spotlight has turned from their airplane to Musk’s fancy car. But that’s going to be fleeting. There’s no reveling in Tesla’s discomfort because when it comes to lithium ion batteries, the heat goes both ways.

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See Lewis Larsen’s whole presentation and contact him for interviews, below:

The ultimate goal of a career criminal politician is to run an agency, or top committee, in order to conduit money to friends and keep the lid on cover-ups. Those at the heads of agencies and committees are often the dirtiest of the dirty. They get themselves put there in order to run the scams. Who ran agencies that conduit-ed money and covered up and stalled investigations?

The current trend in the industry is towards the development of lithium–ion …. guilty of conspiring to buy and dismantle the Los Angeles electric street car system, … In August 2008, Mercedes-Benz sued Cobasys for again refusing to fill a large, …

8 May 2013… are alleged to have conspired to fix prices of Li-Ion batteries that were included in … Palo Alto purchased many devices containing Li-Ion batteries, … These staff costs will be fully reimbursed in any resolution of the litigation.

U.S. Senator: Tesla money came from “one of the most disastrously mismanaged and corrupt programs in U.S. history,”

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chairman of the House Oversight subcommittee where Whitcombe testified, has called the loan program “one of the most disastrously mismanaged and corrupt programs in U.S. history,” and said during that Fisker hearing, “The Obama administration owes the American taxpayer an explanation as to why this bad loan was made in the first place.”

He might also want an explanation why DOE’s Whitcombe and Chu hid the truth about VPG while under oath before his subcommittee.

Tesla owners, investors and their search engine owners paid Washington staff to get false stock impressions and taxpayer funds in order to unfairly and unethically fund Tesla.

So besides the fact that it has now been revealed that Tesla cars spy on their owners while you are driving one, the company was acquired in a hostile takeover, each car has constant mechanical problems, the door handles can lock you in the car, Solyndra and Tesla buildings were corrupt real estate deals, the batteries have to be assembled in a blast chamber because they could explode, and the Tesla people paid to sabotage Fisker and other competitors… the list of bad Tesla things now seems to be record-breaking

Energy Department Staff find that the tracks they thought they covered up were actually NOT covered up… Oops!

As departing energy department staff shredded and deleted as fast as they could, they thought they had covered the tracks of the theft and manipulation of billions of tax dollars which they routed to their friends.. not so much. Every insider phone call, every insider email (even on personal email accounts that they used to hide the process) every conversation in a Washington or Virginia restaurant with security cameras, every conversation in a car.. all documented. Postings by ACLU staff, such as the widely distributed post below, show that every aspect of the energy department “secret” deals is documented, archived and only one subpeona, or one FOIA filing or any investigator demand away from disclosure:

“ACLU CONCERNS OVER WHO SPYS:

As is now widely reported in the news: Any device that is marketed as a “smart device” or ANY electrical device, can be used to track you. Any bored child, hacker or competitor, with easily downloaded software tools, can spy on you using the following methods:

By tracking your utility smart-meter use activity.

By tracking when you cross bridges, or other points, on your bridge toll fastrak device.

By reading everything you ever wrote, read, looked at or clicked on in Facebook, Google, Twitter and any other “social media” site no matter how high you set your privacy settings. Don’t use “social media” if you don’t want to be tracked, and have your experiences processed to sell you ads and lose all of your privacy. Shut off all of your social media accounts. You don’t need any of them. Post this posting in blogs about any “social media”.

By reading any device that your bluetooth can connect to or transmit from, or to. Turn off Bluetooth. If your computer is offline but your phone or tablet is connected to your computer, hackers can backdoor into your computer through any connected device.

By reading your use of, location of use and activity when you use any ATM.

By using any aspect of Google. Google exists simply to spy on, and track people.

By using a parking lot monthly, daily or pay-per-use card or device. Pay by cash.

By logging all of your profile versions and communications on dating sites.

By being in any major city. Every major city has cameras that cross cover every part of the city. The cameras in stores and on buildings are crossed over. Most every bus, police car and many utlities vehicles share their cameras to the common database which any group can access.

By watching you from drones that are so high, or so small, you can’t see them.

By watching what you watch on Netflix, Hulu, Youtube, Comcast, Xfinity and similar media outlets.

By using less than three mouse clicksevery Dell Server, Cisco router, Linksys device, Intel motherboard and Netgear device can be “backdoored” open and every document it is attached to read, opened and acquired.

By making the phone manufacturers Apple, HTC, Samsung, etc. put a secret switch in your phone so they can kill your phone remotely if you start to organize. Buy the oldest phone you can find, without GPS or even a screen. The old ones won’t have tracking chips.

By lasering, microwaving or otherwise bouncing energy off the windows or objects in your home or office to listen to you by recording the air vibrations of those objects that your voice causes.

By reading your location of uses, direction of travel, individual actions, trends in purchases, amounts of purchases and time of purchases for each and every credit card and debit card use.

By intercepting the network application in your car dashboard and watching the people behind you and on the street via the back-up camera in your car.

By using deaf people or specialized computers to read your lips no matter how far away you are or what windows you are behind.

By remote activating any camera on your computer, mobile device, TV, or any other location and watching you while putting fake screen information on your screen so you do not know they are watching you. Remove the battery of any mobile device when not using it. Hacker software makes your device appear to be turned off but it is still alive and watching you.

By reading every email that passes over any server in the world and by logging your passwords for any server.

By looking through walls with wifi distortion field devices, interferometry devices and EMF grid sensors.

By simply turning on software products such as Predator, Carnivore, CALEA, Prism, DCSNET, and over 100 others that exist to automatically acquire every personal information element they can find in an unattended manner.

By monitoring the GPS, Siri, OnStar, Microsoft Sync, Tesla dashboard, Nokia Here Audio and any other networked electronics in your car. Don’t buy a “smart car” if you don’t want to be watched every second you drive it. You can be listened to through it. Your GPs signal can be hacked and rerouted through it.

By reading the GPS, cell phone signal triangulation, bluetooth, Near Field Communications chip, modem or any other signal on your cell phone or table. Remove the battery on any device you don’t want to be tracked on. Only use an old cheap phone with no GPS and no internet capability.

By using fake cell towers called “sting rays”, your cell phone signals can be easily intercepted.

By making the “remember” function of any browser send what it “remembers” back to the hackers.

BY Itunes, Pandora and music services storing your preferences and all use data which can be forwarded to others.

By acquiring all information from lotteries, contests and subscription cards you fill out at expo’s fairs, online and at any other location. Filling out a contest entry guarantees you will end up on the junkmail lists.

By capturing and databasing all of your product exchanges and returns, store and log all of those actions and then hackers, and others, can access their database and pull down all of your records.

and more…

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While the stated purpose is to “stop crime”, in many cases the information acquired, as we now learn from the IRS data manipulations, is used by some to stop, delay or harm those who have conflicting points of views. The statement that it is “legal” is mitigated by the fact that it now only costs $50,000.00, or less, to buy a “law” or “policy” in Washington. Corporate lobbyists buy them every day. Corporations and political operatives have the same agenda: To use you for their purposes. So they are not motivated to fix it.

The proven “targeting” of political adversaries by the IRS, and others, shows that, given the chance to use the system against those with other views, they always will.

Tesla “Battery Swap” a smoke-screen to get rid of exploding battery pack

Tesla has been scrambling to address the issues that killed Fisker, namely, that their batteries can explode and burn you, your kids and your house up in a big nasty fireball.

Part of a number of lawsuits currently filed on Tesla note that Tesla books tax giveaways as “profit or revenue” instead of selling cars it has made a business out of taking tax money. Today, the State of California revealed that Tesla had received another $34 million in a one-of-a-kind, exclusive kickback of taxpayer money to help a bunch of billionaires who just happened to be the same billionaires that financed the related campaigns! Amazing!

DG- Bost

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Tesla just got a $30-million tax break

By Giuseppe Macri- Daily Caller

The state of California just approved a $34.7-million tax break for electric car manufacturer Tesla Motors to expand the company’s production capability by another 35,000 additional units per year.

As a result, Tesla will be exempt from paying sales and use taxes on its planned purchase of $415 million in new manufacturing equipment, which California estimates will result in a $24-million economic boon to the state’s economy.

The California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority was the state panel that authorized the tax break. The panel is chaired by California state Treasurer Treasurer Bill Lockyer.

Since Tesla is still using our tax money, that means all of their internal financial records are available, on request, for public review, right?

Dj-

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The lawsuits against Tesla state that Tesla is pulling funny business with the numbers. Why wouldn’t the State of California wait until the NHTSA review is complete, or is this because they know the NHTSA review is going to go south?

T- Fresno B

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Tesla has gotten tax money from California before and they STILL need more cash from the taxpayers? Why can’t the Google Guys or Kleiner pay for this instead of the taxpayers? WTF?

Dan

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Google+

Political White House super executives Bill Daley and Larry Summers, both thought to be shoe-ins, shockingly end candidacies at same time as investigations reveal their participation at the time and place that the Google and DOE kickbacks began.

Watch the news for more as details evolve….

The net is tightening around the suspects who ran a multi-billion dollar DOE/Google/Election scam: Daley, Summers, Rattner, Emanual, Gibbs, Axelrod. All of whom suddenly quit the White House or high office when investigators let them know what they had on them!

Roberts- LA Times, Chicago Office

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All of them bailed out, at the height of their careers, in a bad economy, when they had the best jobs online already, because of “information they received”. It made no sense for them to cancel campaigns or jump ship, when they did, unless they knew they were going to be busted. They all issued comments that used the suspicious: “after careful consideration” language and the “spend more time with my family” smoke-screen phrasing. They all worked at the White House on the illegal ordering of the direction of the DOE funding decisions and they, and their chief of staff’s, all met with Google’s investors, who benefited the most from the DOE funding decisions. They all are under investigation by multiple organizations for re-routing federal funds to special interests during their White House stint. Ironic? Coincidence? or Crime?

Baily Johnson- Times Independent

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Bill Daley ends his campaign, former White Chief of Staff. Larry Summers ends his White House nomination campaign at the same time. Two of the most powerful people in politics suddenly bail. Deja Vu.. Yes: Can you say Emanual, Gibbs, Rattner, Axelrod? They find out all of their back-door, insider, communications are on record with NSA, DEA, and many other agencies, who caught them while looking for other crimes.

Betty T.- Wall St. J. Stringer

Tesla ships emergency home fire prevention device to all owners. Says it is “not a recall” but an “upgrade”. To deal with the new, additional, fire danger for Tesla cars. Tesla is shipping a new gadget to all owners. Like: Not a bug, it’s a “feature”! Detroit News is now reporting that NHTSA has ordered Tesla to Recall The Entire Line over the NEW Fire Danger!

After sending out a mind-numbing amount of TESLA press releases and a tsunami of stock media shill articles saying that there is “no problem, nothing to see here, move along” Now we finally get to the truth:
———————————————————Woo Hoo. It only took Tesla a decade and a billion dollars to sell 25,000 of something that their competitors have been selling tens times as much of, since 1890, for half the price and with 70% less development cost and it still doesn’t work. And we should be impressed with this because of why?

Tesla to Upgrade Adapter on Reports of Garage Overheating

Tesla Motors Inc. (TSLA), which is under investigation by U.S. regulators over fires in its Model S sedan after battery punctures, will upgrade wall-charger adapters following reports of overheating in garages.

The charger connectors, which tether Tesla-issued cables to wall outlets, will be mailed out in the next two weeks, Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk said in an interview today. The replacements will be treated as a recall, though owners won’t be required to travel to service centers. Overheating can stem from inadequate household wiring, he said.

“These are very rare events, but occasionally the wiring isn’t done right,” Musk said. “We want people to have absolute comfort, so we’re going to be providing them with an upgraded adapter.”

The decision to provide the improved part follows a series of about a half-dozen incidents, described on a Tesla-owner website and in some cases relayed to U.S. regulators, in which Model S wall plugs melted or smoked while vehicles were recharging. The redesigned adapter will include a thermal fuse designed to shut off charging if overheating is detected, Musk said.

Tesla fell 1.2 percent to $145.72 at 4 p.m. after earlier falling as much as 3.6 percent. The shares have plunged almost 25 percent from their peak in September after three reports of battery-related fires in the Model S in October and November.

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an inquiry Nov. 19 after the last fire.

Six Incidents

Tesla isn’t aware of any fires that have been definitively caused by its cables, electronics or vehicles, said Liz Jarvis-Shean, a company spokeswoman. The replacement adapters are expected to cost “a few million dollars” and have no material impact on earnings, she said.

The company in December sent a software update to its customers to deal with the recharging issue. The new software is designed to trigger a 25 percent reduction in charge current when it senses conditions that could lead to overheating.

The company isn’t aware of any overheating incidents since the software update, Musk said.

Regulators Monitoring

At least six overheating incidents were reported on the Tesla Motors Club users forum website between March and December.

In October, one Model S owner reported that “plumes of smoke” came from his adapter, which fused to the charging cord. A York, Pennsylvania, owner reported burning his hands and arm trying to remove his charging cord after smelling melting plastic in December.

There are five reports of Model S cord and plug overheating in NHTSA’s consumer complaint database, including some of the incidents reported on the Tesla user website.

Tesla said its Model S and charging system didn’t cause a fire in a Southern California garage in November.

While there was a fire at the wall socket where the vehicle was plugged in, the car itself wasn’t burned, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in e-mailed comments.

Investigators couldn’t conclude whether the fire started inside the wall socket or was caused by the charger, and found it had nothing to do with the battery, the Orange County Fire Authority said last month.

Tesla has informed NHTSA of the overheating incidents, the software update and the new charger adapters, Musk said.

“NHTSA is monitoring reported fires associated with certain Tesla Model S charging cords and adapters and will take appropriate action as necessary,” Nathan Naylor, an agency spokesman, said in an e-mailed statement.

Google investors paid for the national election expenses and outside services and manipulated Google searches so they got: patent laws changed that benefit them, business tax laws changed that benefit them, free jet gas and free money for Google’s car company -Tesla. Tesla is owned and controlled by the owners of Google and their investors. Sweet Deal! A former Google staffer, who had to leave to go overseas, has started spilling the beans. He has stated that Steven Chu was best friends with all of the Google and Kliener investors before he was “picked” (slid into place) to head DOE where he could conduit money. Google bosses shouldn’t sleep with Google employees girlfriends, apparently.

Senator halts Google’s taxpayer-subsidized executive jet fuel deal

Your tax dollars at work

By Iain Thomson, 13th September 2013

A year-long investigation by US senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) into Google’s use of NASA’s Silicon Valley airport has shown that the company benefitted from buying cheap aviation fuel from NASA at a discounted price arranged by the Pentagon.

“Are some executives getting a special deal on fuel that isn’t available to other businesses?” said the Republican Senator Glassley, who will be conducting an audit into the arrangement. He added that the Google/NASA deal raises concerns about the government being a “fair broker with businesses and responsible steward of tax dollars.”

Google currently has a Boeing 767, Boeing 757, four Gulfstream V’s, two helicopters, and an 1982 Dornier Alpha Jet based at Moffett Field, which is handily right next door to the Chocolate Factory’s campus. The arrangement is part of a 2007 deal between NASA and Google that allows Google to rent space at the airport, with the space agency getting to use Google aircraft for experiments as the quid pro quo.

But, according to The Wall Street Journal, Google’s air force (managed by holding company H211) has also been benefitting financially by buying its aviation fuel cheap from NASA, which is supplied by the Pentagon. Documents obtained by Senator Grassley show that since 2009, H211 has bought 2.3 million gallons of jet fuel at an average price of $3.19 per gallon.

“I don’t see how in the hell anybody can buy it that cheap,” said Fred Fitts, president of the Corporate Aircraft Association, adding that the average price his members were paying was $4.35 per gallon.

According to FAA records, Google aircraft have flown from Moffett 710 times since 2007, which includes 20 flights to the luxurious Caribbean island of Tortola, 17 to Hawaii, and 15 to Tahiti. New York and Los Angeles are also frequent destinations, and many flights also go to Europe.

The FAA reports that three of Google’s jets, including the 767, flew from Moffett last year to Croatia, where CEO Larry Page was a groomsman at his brother–in-law’s wedding, and bought 24,000 gallons of fuel for the trip at a price of $3.33 per gallon, more than a dollar less than the going rate. According to H211’s contract, fuel bought at Moffett should be used “for performance of a U.S. government contract, charter or other approved use.”

Kenneth Ambrose, an executive with H211, said that it bought “the only fuel available at Moffett” and pays “full retail for hangar space that includes none of the ground support typically included at business aircraft hangars.”

NASA does, of course, get the use of the aircraft for science, and collects $1.3m a year in rent from Page’s people. According to Grassley, NASA has used Google’s aircraft 115 time for atmospheric testing flights, but all but 11 of these flights have used the Chocolate Factory’s Alpha Jet, rather than its much more thirsty Boeings or Gulfsteams.

“NASA is always looking for innovative, public-private partnerships to help advance our mission and provide benefit to the American taxpayer,” a spokeswoman for NASA told the WSJ.

Now that the sweetheart deal with Google has been stopped, its fleet has to buy its fuel elsewhere at market prices. But the Moffett deal could soon end anyway, as Google is planning to build a $82m private terminal at Mineta San José International Airport, so that its execs can continue to fly without encountering the hoi polloi.

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US senator Chuck Grassley has now been targeted by an elite programming team at Google. Senior staff ordered the inside team at Google to “pull a Santorum” on US senator Chuck Grassley. This involves programming the Google search engine to hold negative search finds about Senator Grassley at the top of search engine results. Google is not happy about his findings.
Google had previously targeted Sen. Rick Santorum as a “political enemy” and ordered his name placed at the top of Google searches associated with a horrific sex term. Sen. Rick Santorum went to great lengths to attempt to have the attack on Google, by Google, removed. Google has denied that they manipulate search engine results but analysis of their algorithms and interviews with their staff have confirmed otherwise.

Senator Charles Schumer, The Consumers Union, and a variety of consumer groups across the nation, today, have called for an investigation of lithium ion batteries based on reports of extensive explosions and fires which have, literally, set consumers on fire. Standing in front of a Best Buy, Senator Schumer revealed that research has shown that lithium ion batteries in cars, cell phones and other products are now known to explode for no reason. Asian produced batteries are said to be produced with no OSHA, safety or security standards. Tesla uses these batteries.

Senate investigations were revealed in major media nationwide today, disclosing that the Treasury Department and OMB had recorded in documents that Tesla’s DOE loan was rigged and that the loan Tesla received “UNJUST ENRICHMENT”.

Multiple taxpayer groups announced plans to file charges in order to have all of the money returned by Tesla, to the taxpayers.

For more on this Google: “Solyndra unjust enrichment investigation”

Tesla suddenly announces new funding raise but lies about what it is for:

Only a week after Elon Musk told the market on a live global phone-cast that Tesla did not need to raise more money, they suddenly need to raise massive amounts of money.

Using the pretext that it is “just so we can pay back the loan” (‘Public give us your money again so we can give you your money back that we got by lies’) Can you say: IT DOESN’T WASH?

In the usual Elon Musk “It’s not a tornado, it is lovely spinning air” spin on bad news he hypes the hype.

Just like when he said he would “guarantee resale value” when all of the cheap KIA’s and Fusions came out looking just like a Tesla and when he said “here’s a new battery warranty” when the investigations showed that his batteries burn your family alive when they get wet.

The auto industry is not pleased that Tesla bought-it’s-way-in instead of earning-it’s-way-in like they did. For payback, they took extraordinary measures.

Never in the history of the automobile industry has there been a concurrent release of a tapered-nose/ open-mouth grill design by multiple companies.

As soon as Tesla and Fisker announced, and sought to sell, their cars with tapered-nose/ open-mouth grill designs, the auto industry took action with an insidious plan. They started releasing the cheap models of their car lines with tapered-nose/ open-mouth grill designs.

Now you can get a cheap little KIA, Ford Fusion or any number of low-cost cars that look just like a Tesla.

People buy Tesla’s because they are arrogant rich people who want to make a statement about their ego’s as they drive down the road past you.

BUT

Now you can’t tell if the car coming at you is a Tesla, KIA, Ford , etc.

Market research experts say that the value of owning a Tesla has dropped by at least $30,000.00 now because you can buy any number of cheap cars that look just like the Tesla.

Oh well.

Google is now in trouble for spying on everybody. Google is one of the biggest “silent investors” in Tesla.

Elon Musk has admitted to the NY Times that his cars are wired to report your location, route of travel, dashboard settings and other real-time use information back to his office.

It is now also learned that the hands free microphone in the cars can be remote activated and also hacked to listen to everything you say in a Tesla.

That’s nice. It is always good to pay $100,000.00 to someone so they can listen and watch everything you do.

May 9, 2012 … SEC Charges Deloitte & Touche in Shanghai with Violating U.S. Securities Laws … The Securities and Exchange Commission today announced an … The firm is charged with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires …

Oct 25, 2013 … Microcap Company CEO – SEC charged Laidlaw Energy Group CEO Michael Bartoszek, who illicitly profited from selling his shares of company stock based ….. The former Deloitte partner and his son agreed to pay more than …

In public companies, this type of “creative accounting” can amount to fraud, and investigations are … such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in the United States. …. Unify Corporation, 2000, Deloitte & Touche, United States.

(PHOTO: No volume production cars had open mouth tapered front ports until Tesla and Fisker)

As one post quotes:

“Ordinization: Manufactured Addiction For Profit. This is the process of using ingested substances to trick the brain in order to create addictive profit opportunity.

Fats, salts, sugars, breads, alcohol, tobacco and drugs use ordinization to addict consumers to buy them. Most of the makers of these products receive subsidies from your tax dollars. In other words, you are paying them to addict you and your family.

The key to ordinization is that you don’t want to believe it is happening to you because the addiction creates a synthetic bliss which your psychology causes you to defend. You get mad if someone implies they want to take away your cigarettes, alcohol, dessert, etc.

Government support of these products creates a nation of addicts, drunks, obese people, personality disorders, problem children and a very unhealthy society.

(For more on this see: “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us”, By Michael Moss (Author) Available on Amazon and as seen on the Dr. Oz show)

Billions of dollars are spent each year to refine and increase the addictive qualities of these products. “Product science” consultants have vast laboratories where they research food, beverage, fragrance, texture, taste and all human stimulants right down to each neuron in the brain. They want to see how they can control an entire generation of consumers to be unable to resist buying their product.

Elite politician’s operatives spray certain fragrances at rallies and then try to spray the same scent near polling places so you recall the candidate with a “home cooked meal” smell and want to vote for them without realizing why. Vegas hotels and big Malls use psychological sense vapors to control consumers. 60 Minutes recently had a segment on a company, Givaudan, that other companies, like McDonalds and Pepsi, hire to create addictive flavors. This is all out in the marketplace.

If you don’t want to be a product zombie, demand that Congress outlaw Ordinization.”

We see that the tapered nose, open-vagina front of the car is a first-time-ever design phenom. The other car companies (See the new Ford Fusion, Kia, etc.) copied the tapered nose, open-vagina front of the car and released the same design nose structure at the same time in order to make the Tesla and Fisker less valuable in the market. There has never, in auto history, been a concurrent release of tapered nose, open-vagina car front designs until Tesla’s and Fisker’s competitors decided to devalue Tesla’s and Fisker’s cars. The concept of the look, though, comes from the female vaginal orifice psychological mnemonic trigger effect that appeals to rich yuppie males. This effect was designed by Madison Avenue branding companies.

As shown in the design studies, the design of the Tesla and Fisker uses curves that duplicate the same curves a man sees when he is crouched over the body of a nude woman. You can find numerous studies that show the overlay of a woman’s nude body on the exterior body panels of the car to show how, and why, they formed the car that way.

As we see in the horrific, and telling, Millionaire Saatchi throat grab attack by Nigela Lawson’s rich egotistical husband on her, caught on-camera, in the news (Google it or go to TMZ): rich men see women as objects to dominant and manipulate. Tesla and Fisker designed their cars to remind rich males of nude women so that they would psychologically feel like they were dominating a nude woman when they approached the front of the car, or viewed the car from ¾ views or drove it. This use of addictive imagery appeals to the type of males that built the Tesla and Fisker car companies (100% male dominated) and that the cars sell to (98% rich white males) who want to tell the world that they are “the boss of all things”, especially women. Silicon Valley men are involved in more abuse charges in divorce proceedings and hire more prostitutes than in any other city. Silicon Valley men buy more Tesla’s than in any other city. This is visual product Ordinization. This is also another addictive commercialization effort funded by your tax dollars.

Alison Keever
Los Angles

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Albert C, Palo Alto, California

Everybody has noticed that if a person is driving a Tesla, they almost always turn out to be a swinging dick, arrogant, slicked back hair, Aryan Stanford clone. They are, generally, rude abrasive people. It really says a lot about the person if they drive one, but mostly it just reinforces that, that person is a weasel.

So they’re going to demonstrate the process for swapping the battery. Is there anyone who doesn’t believe they can swap batteries?

The bigger problem is one of cost and practicality. Let’s say you want to set up a battery-swap station in a major population center. And let’s assume you want to be able to service a modest 100 cars per day (in LA a gas station might need to service ten times that in a day).

So you need to have room to store 100 fully-charged batteries. And you need the equipment and facility to charge discharged batteries that just came out of the cars. And you’re going to need heavy equipment to handle and manage the ~400 pound batteries themselves.

Now, consider the cost of the batteries…it seems that Tesla doesn’t really want to say what they cost – articles about Tesla frequently refer to them as costing “tens of thousands of dollars.” I’ve seen prices that indicate Tesla might be selling extra batteries at a considerable loss, possibly to obfuscate the true cost as a PR move. Battery cost is something that Tesla *really* doesn’t want to talk about:

Musk hung up on Barron’s when they wanted to discuss battery cost. Just flat-out hung up on them.

So, anyway, let’s assume for now that a battery pack costs ~$25,000. If you want to have 100 of them on hand for swapping at such a station, your inventory cost is a $2.5 million. Read that again. Two point five million dollars in battery inventory alone.

Now let’s look at some handling issues. These are ~400 pound batteries. You’re not just going to have one guy carrying them around. Or even 2 or 3 guys. You’re going to have forklifts running around inside some kind of underground bunker (because you’ll be replacing the batteries from under the car) that stores all the inventory and charging equipment. We’ll assume the forklifts are electric too, so no need to worry about extra ventilation in your battery bunker. A hundred 400 pound batteries is 40,000 pounds of material that you’re going to be carrying around each day.

Now consider the storage space needed for all the charged batteries…and the racks and chargers to charge them on. That bunker’s gonna be big. What is the land and construction cost going to be for this facility? Especially in an area like LA?

And then…what does the battery swap cost the consumer? After you factor in the $2.5 million inventory cost, the facility cost, the labor and equipment cost, the cost of the electricity to recharge everything, and the lifespan of a battery (which are all going to be doing full cycles every day, granted that you’re in a swap-system now)…and I don’t know. The battery swap facility has to at least break even, if it’s a Tesla-owned facility. Has to make a reasonable profit if it’s a 3rd-party kind of thing. So…$100 a swap? $50? $250? Dunno. Probably can’t know until you actually get a good handle on the facility cost and the lifespan of batteries that are in that kind of constant-use cycle.

Finally, let’s just simply look at time. How long does it take to do the swap, considering that you have to get the car over a limited number of service bays to drop it out from underneath the car and onto a forklift, carry that battery to a charging rack and plug it in, pick up a charged battery from that rack, bring it back to the car and lift it up and install it. Let’s assume that’s ~15 minutes per car, which I have a feeling may be a bit optimistic, but for now it’ll work. On the face of it, you can say “well, at 4 changes per hour, you can do 96 swaps on a single bay in a day, so no big deal!”

Ummm…no. Reckon gas stations get steady-state traffic throughout all hours of the day? What happens is people will be coming in on their way to work, or on their way home from work. You have to squeeze the vast majority of your 100 battery swaps into a couple hours of the day…let’s say 4 hours to be generous. To do 100 swaps in a 4-hour window, you need 6.25 bays (so, 7 actual bays).

That means you need a lot more land than initially you may have been thinking. And your underground bunker needs to be that much larger to accommodate all those swap bays. And now you need more forklifts, and room to safely maneuver all of them and have space for them to get in and out of the storage and charging areas. And your labor costs went up too.

In the end, demonstrating that you *can* change a battery…even if the process for doing so is kind of nifty…is utterly irrelevant. You need to demonstrate how you’re actually going to make that work in the real world – on a reasonably-sized chunk of land, in a reasonable amount of time for the consumer, and at a reasonable cost.

So…save the swap demonstration. What you need to “demonstrate” is how you’re physically and financially going to make a real-world facility work.

(Photo Above: Tinman was RIGHT be to afraid of Fires. Musk is a carny with shiny objects)

Red Herrings And Straw Men: Musk’s Argument On Tesla Fires

Dale Buss- Forbes

It’s still a good bet that the Tesla Model S and Elon Musk will come through their fire-investigation saga relatively unscathed and even vindicated in the end.

But in the meantime, what lingers is Musk’s take-no-prisoners argument, which essentially is that the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration probe into two fires in the car in incidents on U.S. roads is a monumental waste of time; that any media outlets even discussing the fires are irresponsible; and that Americans should take his word that the cars are safe.

Musk has to try to ensure that consumers and investors don’t lose faith in him and his technology, and three Model S cars turning into hibachis on the highway (including one in Mexico) comprise a significant obstacle.

This is a refutation of significant parts of his argument, which turns out to be filled with red herrings and straw men that not even the formidable Musk can spin into smooth persuasion.

In attempting to thwart attention to this little problem, Musk has tried to have it just about every way.

First he insisted that there was no flaw in the design of Model S; but then he decided to adjust the suspension on the vehicles via a software change so that they ride higher on the highway and are less likely to take a hit from debris. Initially Musk insisted the cars wouldn’t be recalled, but then he said Tesla actually had asked the federal highway-safety agency to examine Model S — an assertion that NHTSA officials have said simply isn’t true.

Then Musk laid out his broad argument in the context of what he believes is an unassailable rationale for his creation of Tesla in the first place. In “The Mission of Tesla” post that he put on the Tesla blog this week, Musk penned an eloquent explosion of triumphalist fury.

But Musk also exposed some logical vulnerabilities that shouldn’t be ignored even amid his intellectual suppleness:

A murky standard: Musk wrote that “new technology should be held to a higher standard than what has come before” but didn’t say what that loftier standard should be. Then he seemed to undercut his concession by comparing the record of car fires in the Model S — “new technology” — to what he said were a quarter-million gasoline-car fires in the U.S. alone over the last year.

Certainly he believes Model S should be pulled up short at some number far lower than a quarter-million fires; but what is that number? Would he argue that forest fires aren’t important because house fires turn out so many more Americans from their homes each year? And Musk didn’t mention another relevant comparison: the Nissan Leaf all-electric vehicle, which has had no reports of fires with many thousands of models on the road.

The media straw man: Musk complained in the post about “an onslaught of popular and financial media seeking to make a sensation out of something that a simple Google search would reveal to be false.”

But he didn’t really specify what it is that is “false.” By “false,” was he referring to mere reporting about the fires, which seemed by and large to be pretty factual? Or reporters’ failing to compare the number of Model S fires to the much higher number in gasoline-powered vehicles? Or media speculation about the effects of the fires on Tesla?

Or was Musk implying that a substantial number of media outlets leaped to the conclusion that these three incidents mean the Model S somehow is poorly engineered? If it’s the last option, there’s little evidence for his charge.

Besides, whatever “persecution” Tesla might be suffering at the moment at the hands of the media — most of whom actually seem to adore Musk, his technology and his cars — is nothing compared to what, for example, General Motors has suffered in the past. Just a couple of years ago, NHTSA briefly investigated a single fire in a Chevrolet Volt plug-in hybrid that occurred days after it had been crash-tested, and some wild media speculation ensued about the very future of the car.

Going back even further: Dateline NBC aired an investigative report in 1992 that allegedly showed C/K-Series pickup trucks exploding upon impact during accidents due to the poor design of fuel tanks. The NBC producers didn’t tell the audience their nasty little secret: that they had rigged the truck’s fuel tank with remotely controlled model rocket engines to initiate the explosion.

The lightning canard: Musk turned to a ready old comparison about the odds of experiencing “even a non-injurious fire in a Tesla” being less than those of getting struck by lightning.

Yet actually, the odds of getting struck by lightning are about the same as the odds of dying in a plane crash, depending on the time horizons involved. And yet, even the slim odds of fatal airplane fatalities are such that an entire branch of the federal government has been built around preventing and analyzing them, and airlines spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to try to make sure it doesn’t happen.

Or, closer to home for Musk: What would he say is the importance of the odds of a fire not occurring in one of the SpaceX transport crafts that his other company plans to hurtle into space next year, carrying civilian passengers?

The no-harm, no-foul red herring: He pointed out that the drivers of the two Teslas in the U.S. fires weren’t hurt and were, in fact, able to pull their cars safely over to the side of the highway after the car gave them appropriate warnings that things were awry. Musk wrote that “the primary concern is not for the safety of the vehicle, which can easily be replaced, but for the safety of our customers and the families they entrust to our cars.”

But the statement implies somehow that it’s, well, alright to have a fire under the hood of a Model S as long as no one actually has gotten hurt so far. But what if either of those two drivers in the U.S. accidents were upset or panicked or just not quick enough to react to the car’s warnings, and the Model S had burst into flames before they’d had a chance to pull over? Things could have turned out quite worse for those drivers and for others on the road. And by Musk’s logic, only worse outcomes would have made the fires unacceptable.

A devil’s choice: As another way of illustrating the relative danger of gasoline-powered vehicles versus Model S, Musk wrote that “arsonists tend to favor gasoline” and used the analogy, “Trying to set the side of a building on fire with a battery pack is far less effective” than using gasoline would be. Yet Boeing faced significant fire concerns about its Dreamliner jets, and even grounded them for a while, in battery systems similar in basic technology to those used in the Tesla Model S.

Besides, the lethality of a particular form of power depends on the application: Apparently no one pointed out to Musk that prison wardens prefer carrying out capital punishment with electricity rather than gasoline. That fact is just about as relevant as the one he pulled out of the air.

Feigned concern: True, Musk did selflessly suggest that NHTSA shouldn’t be bothering with investigating the paltry little pair of Model S fires when there are “hundreds of gasoline fire deaths per year that warrant their attention.” But is he really that concerned about the stretching of federal resources?

Musk’s other grandiose notion was to state unequivocally that the very survival of the planet may hinge on whether the gnashing media hordes stop bugging him about the two campfires in the Model S.

“If a false perception about the safety of electric cars is allowed to linger, it will delay the advent of sustainable transport and increase the risk of global climate change,” he wrote, “with potentially disastrous consequences worldwide. That cannot be allowed to happen.”

NHTSA, are you listening?

Why Tesla is one of the worst investments in the tech market

Besides the corruption charges noted above, here are some more reasons Tesla is a bad investment for the government, for the public and for the investor in general:

* The spread between assets and liabilities is, nearly insane. The company is so leveraged that any problem will put it out of business. The company has increasing problems with battery packs, cooling systems, center consoles, panel fitting, brakes and other manufacturing issues and those issues keep increasing while competing cars are already past those points.

The company has more liabilities than assets. The only way an investor might make money is if everything goes perfect and they have already had recalls. Their market capitalization could vaporize in an instant with the next big screw-up. Investors must pay a premium in order to bet that the screw-ups that keep occurring, like being $100,000.00 off on the BOM PER CAR, will magically just stop.

* The CEO is distracted by rocket ships, making sure his private PR group promotes his self-glory, escorts and other non-critical items at a point when he should be 100% at Tesla and not playing around.

* Working capital and equity are on a trajectory to hit zero.

* Product launches never go well and Tesla has already had many engineering department failures.

* Liability lawsuits for giving the rich CEO buyers testicular cancer from the large EMF output of the car have not been figured into the cash flow charts. They still have not shielded the car.

* A large number of the “long line of orders” are fake orders from Tesla investors and good-old-boy friends of the Tesla investors to pad the books and make it look like demand is bigger than it is. This is proven by the fact that they cut the production run in half.

* Making 5000 cars is a “toy” car company in the real car world. Tesla told the DOE they were going to make and sell a massive number of cars this year. They lied. The other electric car companies are selling huge numbers. Why not Tesla? Because it is a scam company!

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If you are already an investor in Tesla, think about this: Tesla Executives knew about every single thing on this site before they asked you to invest. Did they disclose it all to you? If so, then you are a crook too. If they did not disclose all of this to you then they owe you all of your losses per SEC violations.

Silicon Valley Expose on Elon Musk

Where was his wife and kids while he was first bopping her?

DF- ValleyWag

Original Tesla Founders blog about the conspiracy that stole their company in order to turn it into a tax dollar scam

We’re all entitled to an opinion (last time I checked … the Supreme Court hasn’t changed that yet, have they?), but the co-founder of Tesla, Eberhard, and other “Tesla Founders”, have a thing or two to say about Tesla on their blog.

Even though going to that blog today has this message from Eberhard about some specific entries of his: “This blog entry has been taken down at the strong request of Tesla’s management. By taking it down, I am in no way admitting that anything I wrote was in violation of any agreement I signed with Tesla Motors, and I stand behind the truth of what I wrote. But it was explained to me that Tesla and its financial backer(s) can spend far more than I can on a lawsuit… Most of the comments on this blog entry have also be taken down; sorry for the inconvenience”, we at SteveParker.com have found the original postings by Eberhard and others (Tesla can’t fire us); the numbers of those fired by Tesla are between 26 and 40, depending on the source, and offices in Detroit and possibly Washington, DC, have been shuttered. With all that, here’s what at least some of the “Tesla Founders” have to say:

“As you may have heard, the ax has been steadily chopping away at Tesla. I don’t pretend to understand the choices being made and honestly wouldn’t even be surprised to learn if I was next on the list. At this point, I’m not even sure if that would necessarily be a bad thing.” “The company has changed so tremendously since I started. It’s very secretive and cold now. It’s like they’re trying to root out and destroy any of its heart that might still be beating.” “I came to Tesla with a great deal of optimism to work for a company with a noble purpose that had a real chance to make a difference in the world. That sense of mission and hope generated incredible energy and determination to overcome the many challenges of producing a great EV. This energy has been drained by the cold, irrational bloodletting that has been going on there. Everyone understands necessary, rational cost management actions in startups, but this was neither necessary nor rational. No thought has been given to the immediate and long term impact on the future of Tesla. Entire departments are stumbling around stunned, bleeding, and headless.” (Photo – California Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tesla’s Martin Eberhard give Tesla the “walkaround” treatment at a Santa Monica, CA, media event in 2006). “It is a damn shame about Tesla. I once again spent the day dreading the words, ‘Did you hear?’ Today I heard that both Wally Rippel and [REDACTED1] are now gone. I just don’t know what they’re thinking. [REDACTED2] referred to it as a ‘stealth bloodbath.’ It’s next to impossible to concentrate and actually get anything done. And the real insult in my mind is that they have the nerve to host the holiday party this Saturday. It’s going to be more like a wake(!)” “The atmosphere at Tesla Motors has been suffering for the last couple of months as the new management have slowly squeezed the life out of engineering. The way in which the layoff/reduction-in-force/firings have been handled is one almighty cluster cabbage. In a stroke of pure genius, the two HR folks were the first to go, leaving nobody to turn out the lights. Only after they left the building did they realize that now there was nobody to write the termination letters. Like I said, pure undiluted genius.” “Sadly – and I do mean this – I am not sorry to leave. The culture that Martin and Marc created is gone. The car is nice, but every day in the office was like a visit to the dentist, not knowing what was going to happen next. Enough. I have moved on.” “Unfortunately, the company that I used to love has changed drastically. If I were to pin point a critical turning point, it would be the day when you were pushed aside. Until then, it was not so obvious how Tesla Motors was really Martin Eberhard’s company. After you were gone, I think the spirit and the character of the company went with you. It was surprising how quickly it happened. Yes, there were technical and operations delays for sure, but these could have been better managed and, to a certain extent, anticipated since what you have started was a major paradigm shift in the industry. It was well understood that a revolutionary movement always comes with major challenges and costs. What Tesla has now become is a mere profit-loss centric company—and with a poor chance of making even that—unless someone absorbs it for its remaining core value that you have left behind. Tesla lost its true evangelist and the leader..” (end of blog quotes)
So, what do you think happened at and/or to Tesla Motors? One thing we can probably rule out, and that’s the forming of Tesla to rip-off people’s money. Even though the company demanded (and got) 100% down-payments of $100,000, or more, from each potential buyer just to get on a list of those wanting a car, the founders of Tesla already had tens and maybe hundreds of millions of their own dollars; many of them came to Tesla after retiring at young ages from their various Silicon Valley success stories.
That’s where the mystery deepens, the part of the story when people shake their heads and force themselves to wonder: Was Tesla simply the modern iteration of what used to be called “planned obsolescence”? Were the Tesla EVs always destined for the dump, their real purpose to “prove” to the world that even the money and minds of Silicon Valley are unable to build and market an EV?
These and other questions will probably never be satisfactorily answered.

SP

How did the Tesla-Takeover investors bribe Congress and Federal Agencies

Per the 60 Minutes Story, Below:

1. They promised to have their law-firms and controlled organizations (ie: NVCA, Perkins, etc) funnel a series of contributions to candidates campaigns.

2. They threatened competing candidates with getting their campaign funds for the next election cut off.

3. They handed out tickets to Washington, DC, LA and Sacramento sports and concert events.

4. They paid for incentive travel.

5. They got controlled members of Congress to pass laws which gave those investors companies billions of dollars of profit potential that they otherwise would not have had.

6. They arranged for people who worked for The White House, DOE & Treasury, etc. to get over-payed bribe jobs if they left those public offices and worked as consultants and employees in other companies who could control the process in Washington DC.

7. They gave real estate deals to friends to buy favors.

—————————————–

FYI: EVERY new investor in Tesla will be deeply investigated by the media and consumer groups.

Tesla/Fisker VC Kleiner Perkins sued for sex issues

A top level insider at Kleiner Perkins has sued the heads of Kleiner for sexual manipulation and the evidence being filed is very interesting. You can read about a good chunk of it online. BUT, This is not the only Kleiner employee with a tale to tell. Stay tuned here (and on the back-up mirror sites) for the next inside story….

Kleiner Perkins sex discrimination case to stay in public eye

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 18 (Reuters) – A high-profile Silicon Valley sex discrimination lawsuit moved closer to trial Wednesday after California’s highest court rejected an effort by venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to take a former partner’s case against it to arbitration.

The suit, which pits former partner Ellen Pao against one of Silicon Valley’s most storied venture capital firms, alleges harassment, discrimination and retaliation. It became the talk of the Valley last year with its references to an affair and its allegations – denied by the firm – of sexual advances and sexist behavior.

“I’m glad the court moved quickly after this series of delays from Kleiner, and that we’re back on track to getting our day in court,” Pao said in an email after the Supreme Court of California denied Kleiner’s petition to review a lower court decision rejecting Kleiner’s earlier attempt at arbitrating the case.

Kleiner said it believed the case was without merit.

“We intend to vigorously defend the matter and are confident we will prevail,” said spokesperson Christina Lee in an email.

The firm had argued that Pao’s suit, filed in May 2012, should move to the private process of arbitration because Pao signed operating agreements for the venture funds in which she was involved that had mandatory arbitration clauses.

Pao’s lawyer, Alan Exelrod, has argued that the agreements did not apply because Pao was suing Kleiner itself – not its funds. Pao never signed any arbitration agreement with the firm itself, Exelrod has maintained.

Kleiner could still appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. If it does not, the case will return to San Francisco Superior Court to start the discovery phase, said Exelrod.

The case in Supreme Court of the State of California is Ellen Pao v Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers LLC and Does 1-20, case no. S212557.

How many cities are claiming Tesla defrauded them?

Supervisors, real estate groups, job councils and others ranging from San Jose, California to New Mexico to Downey, California to Detroit are now claiming Tesla made promises to put their factory in their locations and then backed out after due diligence discovered Tesla to be engaged in crooked real estate kick-backs via their investors and certain officials. SF GATE quotes Tesla executives public stating that The NUMMI plant was dysfunctional for building their car yet they took it, after screwing over a number of cities, so that investors, and friends of investors could get real estate upsides.

Now the lawsuits are starting. The first is from New Mexico. The developer that was going to build a 150,000 square foot facility in New Mexico that was going to produce the Model S. The developer, Rio Real Estate Investment Opportunities, has now filed a law suit against Tesla for fraud, breach of contract, negligent misrepresentation and negotiating in bad faith, over Tesla’s decision to abandon the deal and is seeking damages and attorney fees.

The complaint, filed back in May, says that Tesla was going to lease a building that Rio Real Estate Investment Opportunities was going to build for $1.35 million per year for ten years, plus a 2 percent annual increase. The developer says it spent money on creating environmental reports, obtaining government approvals, and developing engineering designs for the site. Rio Real Estate says it entered into a binding development agreement with Tesla on February 19, 2007, and as a result of the lost deal, they’ve suffered financially.

In tracking all of the finders, intermediaries, real estate bundlers and investors of Tesla.. some interesting links are now emerging in the Tesla and Solyndra real estate connections.

Each city is saying that jobs, revenue, tax fees, property valuation upgrades and other losses were caused by Tesla’s actions.

Watch the fireworks…

FGH- Bost

Elon Musk- not so nice per one of his employees

Elon- not so nice?

We received this letter from Donald who has been working on the line at Tesla until recently, he asked us to pass his thoughts along-

” I am getting so sick of reading about how Elon Musk is a ‘god among men’, he is the ‘living embodiment of Iron Man’, ‘he is the greatest humanitarium the world has ever known…BS! Elon MUsk spends massive amounts of money on two different PR firms and SEO services with orders to make him look as close to a second Jesus as possible. His insane ego is beyond words. These PR firms pay editors and writers, with Musks’s money to write this crap. The backers of Tesla made him go stay in Los Angeles because he is rude, insulting, abusive, paranoid and anal to every employee at Tesla. Tesla has hired great people but the good ones all left once they got a whiff of Musk madness. He is only allowed up here once a week. Everyone at the company thinks he is the biggest prick in history.

Musk is only where he is because he was lucky enough to get an un-earned windfall from Paypal. Now he has too much money and even after spending all the money you could possibly imagine on parties, hookers and buying time with celebrities he has too much money so he told his PR people to buy him an image. Speaking of image, he and two of his investors have such ego problems that they would rather lie to the public, the media and investors about how broken the cars are, how few people want them and how under-used the most expensive non-functional car factory in the world is! They need to tell people that Tesla is bombing and not let people labor under these wrong ideas from his PR blitz.”

“But we are just a startup car company, don’t expect us to sell anything yet” says Musk

Opinion-

Musk says that we should not expect Tesla to have sold any cars because they are just a “new car company”.

NO YOU ARE NOT!

You have gotten hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. taxpayer and institutional pension funds via VC group buddies. Very little of the money you got was from “big private rich people investors”. A track-back on the VC funds shows that the money came from little old ladies pension funds.

There really needs to be a shareholder fraud lawsuit. If we go back and look at the financials before each quarter, the papers you filed with DOE and the “cooked”, errr… “restated” financials, it is clear that the books are cooked, the story to the media is wrong and that you are running a sham deal to hype your ego and to take cash out of loans for your friends giant “service and management fees”.

You have been trying to sell your cars for OVER A DECADE. Only a few yuppie fanboy friends of yours will buy them. Detroit and Japan sell 2000% more cars than you and have introduced whole new lines of cars and sold them out in the same time-frame that you have tried to get people to buy your over-priced, non-innovative, yuppie “statement” of “look how rich I am”. People want their cars, nobody wants yours!

You said, IN WRITING, to the US DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (and, hence, The AMERICAN PEOPLE) that if you got a taxpayer free loan at 400% better terms than any American’s mortgage; that YOU would have sold 200,000 cars over a year ago!!
How many of those 200,000 cars will you sell this year? WHAT! only a few to your friends.. hmmmmmmm?????

You took unfair advantage of the system to create a tort interference with your competitors . You could get sued by Bright Automotive or ZAP Motors for abusing the process in order to hurt them. They could win big!

THE DOE PAPERS YOU SUBMITTED HAVE NOW BEEN ACQUIRED BY MANY PARTIES.
Thank heavens for FOIA’s and investigation committees!

You are trying to bury funds in real estate deals for these new “retail outlets” before you go out of business. Everybody sees through that.

This is going to be a long one, unlike my other blogs. Feel free to post a reply. I’m eager to hear opinions that support or oppose mine.

Let me start with “hats off” to Mr. Elon Musk. He made a fortune in the hay day of the Internet. He could have spent his money on expensive toys like yachts, airplanes, mansions, islands, escorts etc. Instead he had chosen to change the world trough business and technology. Cars and space are every boy’s dreams and Mr. Musk’s actions in those fields make him a hero for many grown up boys me included.

It is a well known fact even to amateurs like me that the gas engine has horrible properties for use as a car engine. This fact prompted the development of the gearbox in an attempt to adjust the character of the gas engine to the needs of the car. As we all know the gear box is bulky, heavy and expensive part of the car. The electric motor on the other hand has perfect character for a car. That’s why the electric car was in the dreams of many for many years. The major obstacle for the dream to become a reality was the lack of reliable battery. Fortunately, high capacity reasonable size and weight Li-ion batteries emerged about the same time when Mr. Elon’s fortune struck. Tesla was born.

I did research Tesla Model S (MS) online and I test drove one in May, 2013. I also deposited $5,000 to buy one in April, 2013, which reservation I cancelled. Below are the results of my observations and the reason for my cancellation.

1. Acceleration. MS is out of this world as far as acceleration goes. I have driven many luxury power cars lately with 8 cyl. engines and power of over 400 h.p. including Mercedes S550, BMW series 7, Citroen C6 and none of them comes even close to the acceleration of MS. Traditionally the faster acceleration the better. For me MS draws the line and presents the question how fast do we want to go.

Fast acceleration is good for those who want always to be first at the stop light and to leave everyone behind accelerating like crazy and consequently breaking same way. Guys, I understand your ego and your motivation, however I have to share with you what my wife says about it ” this man must have very small penis”. Think about it. Is your street behavior trying to compensate for lack of confidence in other areas? Or maybe you are at the top of everything else and driving shouldn’t be excluded. We will leave this to the psychologists to explain.

Fast acceleration certainly helps in some critical situations, but frankly I’d rather drive safe and avoid such than making split second decisions and actions.

The acceleration of MS is so fast than I worry how my body will tolerate it and frankly I’m getting headaches. As the philosopher Friedrich Engels would say “the quantitative accumulations lead to a new quality” ever hungry for more and more acceleration, who would think that the time will come when I say “this is too much” . Well MS drew the line for me.

Finally, we are not alone on the road. I teach my teenage daughters that driving is about predicting and assuming what others will do on the road. In this regard “out of this world” Tesla MS is difficult to be predicted by other drivers and could possibly increase the risk of collisions. The closest I got to a major car incident in the last 20 years was when I was just about to pass a car and a super accelerated Porsche, that was not there a moment ago passed by. I saw the Porsche by a miracle in a split second before changing lanes.

Bottom line, although the “boy” in me wants as fast acceleration as possible, the adult man with headaches and slowing reflexes says that a line should be drawn of how fast is fast enough and Tesla MS goes beyond this line. Of course there is no mandate to accelerate as fast as the car can go and it is good to have the fast acceleration handy when needed. That’s why I’m moderately positive on this great feature, but not overwhelmed and super excited about it. The only excitement is from technological stand point of how far the technology can go.

2. Stability and steering. Here again one doesn’t need a degree in physics to know that low center of gravity means more stability. The batteries are the heaviest component of the car and they are under the floor at the lowest possible location, thus contributing greatly to the stability and steering. Talking about steering Tesla MS has manual controls of steering wheel’s sensitivity. This control is automatic depending on the speed in most high end cars I’ve driven.

3. Convenience and luxury. Tesla MS is equipped with most convenience features expected from a luxury car like keyless ignition, power seats and mirrors, rear view camera, leather seats (optional) among others. However, being a new kid on the block, Tesla does not have the polish and refinement achieved by others in their long history. For example my Mercedes S550 can control the sound system from three different locations. Same function just different places all aiming at effortless convenient control without lifting the eyes from the road.

“Look ma no motor” ! The two trunks front and rare are adequate, but less roomy than expected for me. Combined they may provide equivalent cu.f. space compared to my Mercedes S550, however the space is split not allowing for larger loads.

The back seats of Tesla NS are cramped as is the whole back seat area. The back seat area is inferior to any of the large luxury models by BMW, Mercedes, Lexus, Audi, Citroen. Basically Tesla MS should be considered a luxury 2 seat car. It is anything but luxury riding in the back, not to speak if you take the option to stick two small children in the trunk with the optional folding chairs.

Bottom line is that Tesla MS doesn’t score high in the luxury and convenience category at all. Think of it as a luxury 2 seat car, not a large luxury car.

4. Aerodynamics. This is one thing that is subject to precise measurement in wind tunnel and not subject to personal opinion. The fact is that MS beats all of the competition in the large luxury cars segment and many in the sports cars.

Even the door handles are retractable to reduce the drag. All this is for a reason – the battle for a longer drive range. BTW the cramped back seats mentioned above are a result of the effort to get as minimal drag coefficient as possible. So your 200 miles EV range does not come easy. Sacrifices were made to get there.

5. Riding comfort. Those who tried to be “sport” riders know for a fact that “sport” is rarely “comfort”. Typically the sport suspension is firmer and not comfortable. Tesla MS is not an exclusion. Think of it as a sport ride rather than a comfort ride. I had some hopes for a comfort by the optional “air suspension”. Unfortunately, the test drive didn’t deliver on my expectations. I was fortunate to ride Citroen C6 for a while in Europe that rides on air and can say definitely that Tesla with “air ride” option included is very, very far from it. Tesla is less comfortable than my Mercedes S550 as well. It is similar to Infinity I35 and other 2 seat sports cars in my humble opinion.

BTW Mercedes S550 and others allow for a choice between “comfort” and “sports” ride. Not Tesla as far as I know.

For me the riding comfort or rather the lack of it was one of the most important reason for my cancellation.

6. Revolutionary controls. Having a large “tablet” computer controlling all the functions of the car makes more sense for electric car, where most of the information and control signals are in some sort of electrical values rather than mechanical movements as in gasoline powered car. Although unseen before it makes a lot of sense from manufacturing standpoint making the car easier to produce compared to traditional dashboard. It allows for cleaner modern design as well that many like. Finally with so many apps available for “tablet” computers it is a blessing to have a large tablet in the car. More than any other car Tesla is ready to be not just your car but also your office and entertainment center as well. Not to speak that there are many car-centric apps out there such as Google maps, Waze, AroundMe, Yelp that makes other cars look like they are in the stone age with their build-in navigation systems.

The concept is borrowed from the aviation industry where “control by wire” is one of the hottest trends. It should be noted though that such control requires multiple “actuators” or “controllers” on the other end of the wire, that reduces the reliability and often requires duplicated systems.

With all this said, the “tablet” style control is not best suited to control the basic functions of the car like air conditioning, radio etc. It requires removing your sight from the road and could be dangerous. I haven’t have a chance to check the voice control feature and can’t comment on it. Maybe it fills the gap.

I still like the redundancy of my Mercedes S550 allowing the driver and front passenger to control many features from multiple locations – steering column, armrest, dash board and most importantly for the driver without lifting his eyes from the road.

BARRONS2wizard-of-oz-man-behind-the(Picture Above: The scarecrow was RIGHT to be afraid of the fire and MUSK DID just turn out to be some carny who just waved flashy things at us but was a shyster underneath it all after all.)

7. Reliability. There are two forces here that act in opposite direction here. The electric car eliminates many complex systems from the conventional car. Let’s name few – gas tank, fuel pump, gear box, the whole ignition system, gas engine of course with many moving parts, the starter etc. In exchange the electric car brings in new systems such as invertor, charger, battery conditioner etc. Furthermore, the old mechanical components tend to “wear off” and rarely suddenly break. A gear box for example may last over 15 years and over 300,000 miles and after all that life it may start leaking. Electrical and electronic components tend to break suddenly and completely. If a thyristor burns in the invertor this will render your Tesla inoperable right away, whereas if an metal part gets worn in the gas engine it may cause noise or leak but rarely will render the car inoperable.

I guess it takes time to get enough practical results to judge which trend prevails. Also with a revolutionary change like that there will be some baby sickness that Tesla will grow out of as it matures.

With all this said the online forums are full of all sorts of complains about problems here and there such as sudden opening of the doors, problems starting, problems unlocking, sudden error messages etc. etc.

One big advantage of the pervasive computerization is that almost everything is fixable by software updates. At the same time the early adopters are turned into “beta testers”. I love being beta tester of new technologies, not for a price tag of $100,000 though.

8. Hole in the tank. This is one particular problem with Tesla MS that is widely recognized, admitted by Tesla and not fixed as the date of this publication. If you leave your Tesla MS unplugged it will lose about 0.5 miles of range per hour. At this rate it will take about 10-15 days for a fully charged battery to drain completely. So if you leave your fully charged Tesla at the airport for a week or two while on vacation or business trip you may not be able to ride your Tesla home upon your return. This is equivalent to a hole in the tank for the conventional gas powered car. If the car is plugged-in than it compensates for such loss by “sucking” approx. 150 Watts of electric power all the time. It is equivalent to to the energy needed to lit an average 3,000 sq.f. house with the new LED energy saving lights.

9. Options. Many of the options are subject to personal preference such as leather, sunroof, special paint etc. In my opinion these options here are not worth the money

– 21? wheels (negative feedback from public forums)

– tech package ($3,500) – cash cow for Tesla. Not worth the money. Some features are kicked up standard features like key-less ignition and rear view camera. For example, do you really need “hi def rear view camera” if standard rear view camera is already included in the base price.

– performance plus package ($6,500) – another bigger cash cow for Tesla, worthless features made to sound great and take the money of wealthy folks with no technical knowledge.

10. Dubious business practices. Larry Page announced that Google will be “no evil” company. Well no business is evil by design. They become “evil” driven by competition. Google has practically no competition and they can afford to be “no evil”. Same applies to Tesla Motors. They are well funded and they have no competition, they can afford to be “no evil”. Instead Tesla is pulling all nasty tricks known in the industry and more. It was quick to abandon the most controversial ones such as calculating people’s time in their lease cost estimate and eliminating the $600 per year mandatory service charge. Many still remain. One example are the useless and expensive option packages (see above) another example they charge $5,000 reservation fee in a second. They claim the fee is fully refundable. What they don’t tell you is that it takes 30 business days to refund it.

11. Investing in Tesla Motors, Corp. (NASDAQ:TSLA) – This will be a subject to another blog.

12. Main reasons for my cancellation

– Tesla MS is luxury 2 seater, not a large luxury car as advertised

– ride is not as comfortable as my Mercedes S550

– super fast acceleration could be dangerous at my age and gives me headaches

– don’t want to be a beta tester @ $100,000 price tag

– hole in the tank (see above)

Disclaimer: I have no interest short or long in Tesla Motors stock, nor do I intend to create one in the next 90 days from the date of this blog.

Credits. My daughter Tina first coined the phrase “$100,00 on wheels” that I used as a headline here.

Tagged electric vehicle, EV. Electric car, Tesla model S |

By Ivan

—————————————————————————–

Using the guise of charging station “announcements” to cover a midnight release of financial data that portends the end of Tesla, the CFO tried to lie and say that the bad sales were because of “supplier problems” instead of admitting that the lack of sales was because nobody wants Musk’s poorly built, overpriced waste of taxpayer dollars!

The carefully hidden financial report reveals other shocking details:

* Tesla lied about giving all of the NUMMI workers jobs. Musk, essentially lied to the unions and said: “oh yeah, Fremont, we will keep all of your UAW autoworkers employed here at the NUMMI plant if you give us a sweetheart deal on the property”.. lie! In the financials Tesla reveals that all the new people are causing problems because they don’t know what they are doing and ruining the cars. Musk should have hired all of the car factory trained union workers he promised instead of outsourcing to idiots with tattoos. (Musk hates the unions)

* H1B Visa foreigners are a chunk of the Tesla payroll. They used our tax dollars to give people from other countries a job!

* The “charging stations” are nothing more than a few garages with plugs in the most out-of-the-way podunk crap piece-of-shit towns in the country. How lovely that in order to drive a Tesla you must be forced to drive to Meth infused toothless waste-lands full of good ole boys and sit there next to your car for 40 minutes while the red necks shuffle by and say: “That’s is one o’ them Tesler’s huh? You got an awful pretty mouth.. do you like to canoe?” Why should the public be forced to re-live scenes from Deliverance?

* The DOE already changed the loan terms to put the taxpayer at greater risk, even after the Solyndra loan terms controversy.

* DOE told Tesla to pay up and get out of the loan ASAP and to NEVER NEVER NEVER go out of business until AFTER the elections!

TF- BTSN

Detroit Free Press busts Tesla’s Musk’s BIG LIE!

In recent interviews Elon Musk refused to say how many cars had been built by Tesla.

Elon Musk, after scamming a number of other cities about their factory, bought the NUMMI car factory in Fremont. NUMMI was built by Toyota and General Motors and operated as the premiere showcase car factory in the world. GM was using it to learn how Toyota builds cars so good.

It was built to deliver 500,000 CARS PER YEAR!!

500,000 CARS PER YEAR IS WHAT NUMMI WAS FULLY EQUIPPED TO BUILD!!

NUMMI could rapidly shift from one new car design to the next if people knew what they were doing. NUMMI switched out between the Chevy Nova, The Geo Prizm, The Chevy Prizm, The Hilux, The Voltz, The Vibe, Tacoma Pick-up Trucks, The Matrix and could change up to a whole new car within 19 days.

This was a ready-to-go car factory. There should have been no learning curve, no “build-a-new-car factory” delays, it should have been all up and running per the notarized written assurances Tesla gave to the DOE, In WRITING!

So Musk got it and fired all of the car builders.

Tesla has been trying to get people to buy a non-hand-built version of their car since 2003!!! That is a LONG TIME. GM AND TOYOTA built a ton of new car designs in the same factory in the same time-span!!

SO… after spending HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of YOUR TAX DOLLARS and beating their awful car design for a decade, how many cars have they built?:

255 CARS!!!

They are still hand building the cars. The factory turns out to be almost unused except as a very expensive roof.

In a 500,000 car capacity ready-to-go, state-of-the-art car factory after spending hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars for a factory that GM AND Toyota had already tuned up they find that EVERYBODY thinks their car is a narcissistic Stanford yuppie Sandhill Road rich frat-boy meat-head man-toy! Nobody wants it!!!

Tesla cars could explode in flames if they get wet.

it was discovered that a huge number of Fisker electric cars, which use the same lithium chemicals as the Tesla batteries, blew up after they got wet from Hurricane Sandy. Pictures of the gutted, totally destroyed $100,000.00 cars are all over the internet. Buy a Tesla, go up in smoke….

Tesla Roadster facing ‘brick’ battery problems?
Here’s a new worry for electric car owners: bricking your new, expensive ride. Using a word taken from the computer world, to “brick” an EV means to make your electronic device inoperable. In the case of an EV, it would mean to run the battery state of charge so far down that nothing works anymore
autoblog.com/2012/02/22/tesla-roadster-facing-brick-…

The understatement: Five Problems For Tesla Motors

The understatement: Five Problems For Tesla Motors
Five Problems For Tesla Motors Tesla Motors has responded to my “It’s a Brick” post with a blog post of their own, “Plug It In”. I’m genuinely very glad to hear that the Model S and Model X are…
theunderstatement.com/post/18456614822/five-problems-for-tesl…

What Do the Financial Problems of Tesla’s CEO Mean For the Company

What Do the Financial Problems of Tesla’s CEO Mean For the Company …
Register for our GRI Certified Training Course. What Do the Financial Problems of Tesla’s CEO Mean For the Company?
triplepundit.com/2010/06/what-do-the-financial-problems-…

Did Elon Musk Mislead Fox About Problems At Tesla?

Did Elon Musk Mislead Fox About Problems At Tesla? | SiliconBeat
A couple of weeks ago, Fox Business anchor Liz Claman made her annual visit to Silicon Valley to interview local CEOs. One of the exclusives she scored was an interview with Tesla co-founder Elon Musk.
siliconbeat.com/2012/09/27/did-elon-musk-mislead-fox-ab…

Don’t look so smug: Your Tesla might be worse for the environment than a gas car

Don’t look so smug: Your Tesla might be worse for the environment than a gas car

By Peter Braun | November 14th

On a recent drive from Portland, Oregon to Seattle, I stopped for gas near one of Tesla’s new Supercharger quick-charge stations. While my car was filling with liquefied dinosaurs, I happened to overhear two Tesla owners chatting while they topped off with electrons. They were clearly preening to one another about their cars, brimming over with smugness. And, at least in theory, they had every reason to be.

Electric cars, and for that matter hybrids, have been marketed in no small part on the good karma you accrue for owning one. “Buy an electric car and save the world!” But just how smug should those Tesla and other EV drivers be? I wanted to find out. And the answers just may take Tesla, Volt and Leaf owners down a notch.

In the last year, a number of important studies tracking the environmental cost of EVs, and particularly lithium-ion batteries, have come out. What these studies have shown is that the environmental gap between internal combustion and electric power is not as wide as we want it to be, and that, regardless of carbon footprint, the process of making lithium-ion batteries leaves a lot to be desired.

Where did that battery come from?

Carl Sagan is famed for saying, “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows about science and technology.” He could have been talking directly about lithium-ion batteries. Chances are you are sitting within three feet of something that uses lithium-ion technology, heck you are probably reading these words thanks to lithium-ion batteries. Yet, not that many people really understand what goes into them.

So how do they work? Like any battery, lithium-ions work by creating a flow of current (electrons) between a positively charged (missing electrons) cathode and a negatively charged anode (extra electrons), through a conductive electrolyte. Lithium makes a great battery because it is both very conductive, making it a good electrolyte, allows for extremely high electrical potential. And of course, because this electrochemical reaction is reversible, the batteries are readily rechargeable.

tesla charging

As great as lithium is for batteries, it has a dark side as well: The stuff is downright nasty. Lithium is flammable and highly reactive, as anyone who has seen photos of burning a Tesla can attest, but that’s the least of our worries. The EPA has linked the use of extremely powerful solvents in the creation of lithium electrolytes and cathodes to everything from cancer to neurological problems. Specifically, the cobalt used in the creation of the most energy dense lithium-ion batteries is poisonous and extremely carcinogenic. Pulmonary, neurological, and respiratory problems have all been connected to cobalt exposure.

A good rule of thumb is that any industrial process that makes liberal use of the word ‘slurry’ is not good for pandas, or for that matter people. And, boy, does slurry come up a lot in the battery-making process.

Other combinations of lithium are not as bad, but none is exactly good. The lithium-iron phosphate used in lower energy density batteries is better in terms of its carcinogenic effect, but might be worse in terms of the impact on the biosphere.

Is it getting hot in here?

Clearly then, EVs and plug-in hybrids have environmental costs. What effects however, do lithium-ion batteries have on John Q. Polar Bear? Well, a recent study from Norway looked at the global-warming potential of the complete lifecycle of EVs, from mining to recycling. Previous studies hadn’t accounted for the energy-intensive process of building EVs, and missed the point: They’re not that much better than gasoline cars.

The best outcome for EVs was a 24-percent improvement in global-warming potential over the average gas powered car, and between 10 percent and 14 percent over diesel. These numbers are nothing to sneeze at, but they change radically depending on the source of electricity that EVs are powered on.

EVs that depend on coal for their electricity are actually 17 percent to 27 percent worse than diesel or gas engines.
The above numbers rely on the European power mix, which more heavily favors nuclear, hydroelectric, and renewable sources of energy than other parts of the world.

The global warming potential for EVs that rely on natural gas – generally considered to be the cleanest fossil fuel – show an improvement of only 12 percent over gasoline, and break even with diesel.

Most alarming, EVs that depend on coal for their electricity are actually 17 percent to 27 percent worse than diesel or gas engines. That is especially bad for the United States, because we derive close to 45 percent of our electricity from coal. In states like Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, that number is much closer to 100 percent. That’s right folks; for residents of some of the most populous states, buying an EV is not only toxic, it’s warming the planet more than its gas-powered counterparts.

With cars that supposedly generate “zero tailpipe emissions,” how are these pollution numbers even possible? The simple answer is that as well as being messy to produce; battery production requires a tremendous amount of electricity. The initial production of the vehicle and the batteries together make up something like 40 percent of the total carbon footprint of an EV – nearly double that of an equivalent gasoline-powered vehicle.

tesla charging station

The high initial carbon footprint of an EV can be offset when the car is powered by environmentally friendly energy sources like hydroelectric or wind. Unfortunately, when that same EV is powered by electricity generated from fossil fuels, the initial energy cost of EV production can’t be overcome and outweighs gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles.

Previous studies evaluating EVs have overlooked the high energy cost of production, and have focused on the fact that even coal-fired power generation is technically more efficient than internal combustion. But with a carbon footprint from production something like twice that of an ordinary car, an EV needs to be more than “a little” more efficient to make up for all the carbon it generated before it even rolled off the assembly line.

There are also some geopolitical concerns surrounding the switch from gasoline-powered vehicles to EVs, too. One of the selling points of EVs is that they allow us end our dependence on foreign oil and big oil companies. In fact, however, we might just be trading “big oil” in for “big lithium.”

Your Tesla may look sleek and clean on the outside, but you owe it to everyone to know the real cost.
The lithium-ion battery market is expected to grow to $22.5 billion in the next three years, and potentially double that by the end of the decade. That’s small compared to the market for oil, but that will continue to change if more people buy electrified cars and trucks.

As for getting rid of our dependence on foreign material, well … lithium isn’t quite rare, but deposits worth mining are. And, unfortunately for the United States and Europe, the big lithium deposits are in countries like Bolivia, China, and – drum roll please – Afghanistan. None of those countries has a sterling environmental track record.

Given the very real concerns about pollution from battery production, most of which takes place in China, this starts to matter a great deal. Especially when there is so much pressure to keep the prices of batteries down.

Conclusions

So what to make of all this?

Some of you have probably concluded that I hate EVs and don’t think anyone should buy them. That’s not the case. I believe electric vehicles – in one form or another – are likely the future of personal transportation.

But beneath their squeaky clean marketing, EVs are not a panacea, a solution or remedy for all environmental woes. As with any new technology, EVs bring an immense set of new problems; problems we should understand before we become irreversibly tied to the new technology.

Here’s what I suggest: If you are interested in an EV, you should know where your electricity comes from before you sign on the dotted line. If you live in a state with a high dependence on coal, an EV may not be the eco-friendly choice for you.

Ultimately, we can’t let EV-derived smugness get in the way of a real and serious conversation that needs to be had surrounding global warming and the effect energy consumption has on our planet.

Your Tesla may look sleek and clean on the outside, but you owe it to everyone to know the real cost.
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Tesla’s Struggles Raise Questions About Electric Cars …
Tesla’s problems could also spark criticism of the government’s energy loan program, which has been heavily promoted by the Obama administration. The program came under fire after Solyndra, a solar-panel maker, collapsed in 2011 owing taxpayers $535 million.
dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/09/25/questions-about-electric-car…

Tesla Needs Mo’ Money, Has Mo’ Problems – Automotive News

Tesla Needs Mo’ Money, Has Mo’ Problems – Automotive News
Tesla Needs Mo’ Money, Has Mo’ Problems from Jacob Brown on September 27, 2011 at Automotive News. Purveyor of all things electric, automaker Tesla has asked the federal government for yet another loan to get its Model S electric sports sedan off the gro…
blogs.automotive.com/tesla-needs-mo’-money-has-mo’-problems-…

Half of Tesla Roadsters Recalled For Rear Chassis Problems

Half of Tesla Roadsters Recalled For Rear Chassis Problems …
The Tesla Roadster needs no introduction as it is the first electric commuter to be dubbed a sportscar. The speed devils admire it as much as the green fanatics do, but the ones who bought it may not be happy with a recall.
greenpacks.org/2009/05/29/half-of-tesla-roadsters-reca…

After the cataclysmic explosions and self combustion devastation of the Fisker electric cars because they simply GOT WET in the Hurricane Sandy rain, Panasonic has now, not only, stated that Tesla Lithium batteries will also explode and kill the baby, or dog, or other family member you have in the back seat, but that Tesla also received written warnings, in hard copy documents, in the quotations and shipping MSDS sheets that the Tesla batteries are “guaranteed” to explode if salt, or any other water touches them.

With all of the other lawsuits Tesla now has, they expect to get liability lawsuits from owners, suppliers that they sold battery packs to (without disclosing the danger their engineers knew of) and consumer class action groups.

Panasonic engineers have been retained to examine safety issues with the cars.

Did Tesla bankers at Deutsche Bank order German’s to give Tesla a wave-through on safety review that never actually happened?

Did Tesla bankers at Deutsche Bank order German’s to give Tesla a wave-through on safety review that never actually happened?

The United stated NHTSA has sent an extensive review list to Tesla yet we now see that Germany sent no such review list to Tesla and, in fact, the press office of Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt confirms that no tests were conducted by Germany.

Karen started a campaign to force the exposure of the falsehoods which can jeopardize the lives of Tesla drivers by asking every to send the following letter to Germany:

Please Send This open letter to the German Federal Motor Transport Authority, or Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA):

Regarding: Your recent Tesla “safety declaration”.

Dear German Federal Motor Transport Authority:

It is quite surprising to hear that your organization has declared the Tesla completely safe without engaging in full due diligence. It makes it appear like someone got bribed. We certainly hope that Deutsche Bank staff’s substantial positions in Tesla held no bearing. We see that Deutsche Bank staff were just indicted for massive securities fraud and we hope that is just a coincidence.

Numerous organizations and experts have provided data showing that the car is not safe. The statistics, historical facts about lithium ion, and actual evidence point to the opposite conclusion. Many websites, including: http://lithium-ion.weebly.com and others provide rather contrary evidence. Tesla’s own patent documents state that the car is not safe. The Chevy Volt was recalled for far less battery issues with lithium ion.

There are over 200 safety concerns that can be provided to you in a documented report. America has not even started their safety investigation and has requested a deep set of technical documents from Tesla. Did your agency request such documents?

The members of the public hereby request publication of the identities of the reviewers, the methods and analysis methods they employed, the read-out of their data and the conclusive, specific data that the research was based upon. Here is a link to a much more overt investigation you might want to review:http://wp.me/p2BJXK-g7

Sincerely,
XXX

Please feel free to send your own version to Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA) at:
pressestelle@kba.de

Lithium ion Apple tablets and cell phones have exploded into flames and burned down the structures they were in as documented when you search the phrase: “ipad air explodes”.

Authorities in Sugar Land, Texas, ruled that the Fisker Karma parked in the attached garage of a newly built home was the origin of a fire in 2012 that
completely destroyed the car as well as the garage and a portion of the house,
causing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. The owner and his
family escaped safely. The batteries were the same kind of lithium ion batteries
used in the Tesla.

This video shows another one just blowing up in flames for no good reason:

The website: http://lithium-ion.weebly.com shows quite a number of lithium ion
battery disasters where the batteries just took down the structures.
Tesla’s own patent’s, filed with the U.S. Government, state, in their words, that
their batteries could spontaneously explode and destroy your home or office.

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Tesla Deutsche Bankers would never do anything criminal.. except this:

Major media discovered letters that Tesla’s head of Sales sent to potential customers trying to talk them into putting small deposits on Tesla’s in order to help Tesla fake the posted number of cars Tesla could say they had sold in order to fake a “profit”. In fact the company owes hundreds of millions of dollars, has missed its loan payments, has “sold” many cars to its own investors in order to fake up demand and has bought some of its own cars to pad the outlook. Tesla has sold and made less cars in 10 years than GM has sold and made in TWO DAYS! SEC and Investor investigations have been called for. All this according to reporters from The Hill.

Iron Man Terminated

Hollywood Reporter staff reports that a major auto company CEO paid big bucks to have his PR group tell everybody that the movie: Iron Man was based on him. Alas, in the new Iron Man movie, Iron Man’s whole operation is destroyed and his secrets are uncovered. Sad turn of events…

The Senior Immigration Paralegal would be Tesla’s first in-house immigration legal resource and would therefore be responsible for helping Tesla to build-out its immigration law support program. This position manages, oversees and directly assists in handling a large portion of immigration matters in-house, specifically employment-based, nonimmigrant visa applications and permanent residency applications. This position is also responsible for compiling and maintaining various status reports and records relative to immigration related expenses.

•Regularly provide instruction and advice to Tesla employees and foreign nationals on immigration practices and procedures.
•Assist with any problems that may arise relative to a foreign national’s immigration status.
•Assist in the preparation of a monthly status report by tracking immigration costs, volume of immigration files and location of immigration files.
•Create and regularly maintain the legal department’s customized software report to track ongoing immigration matters at all Tesla entities with immigration needs.
•Work with Human Resources to ensure immigration files remain in compliance with state and federal government agency regulations.
•Ensure employee and employer compliance with Tesla’s new immigration policy and procedures.
•Directly handle the recruitment steps necessary to sponsor a foreign national employee for permanent residency.
•Assist with U.S. national’s work-related emigration to foreign countries.

Desired Skills & Experience

Qualifications/Requirements:
•Strong, in-depth knowledge of immigration law, including experience with each visa type mentioned above.
•8-10 years of Immigration Paralegal experience preferred.
•Bachelor’s degree preferred with a strong academic background.
•Strong legal writing and drafting skills.
•Accuracy and attention to detail is a must.
•Experienced professional with great relationship skills, team player, self starter, independent thinker, and has the ability to anticipate the next steps and future issues.
•Ability to work well in a diverse and fast-paced environment with a large and diverse group of people, including Human Resources, Global Mobility, Tesla recruiting, Tesla hiring managers, candidates from countries throughout the world as well as their families.

Senators have begun an investigation of how many NUMMI Workers were promised jobs in Fremont, how many got fired and layed-off and how many H-1B staff Tesla has hired even though they got a free loan from U.S. Taxpayers in the worst unemployment period in recent memory.

In, and during, the following Tesla Proposal, Tesla told Singapore, and a number of other countries, that the battery system was totally safe, even though they had filed patent documents and regulatory documents, now revealed in other articles, which stated otherwise:

Tesla Motors is seeking to gain a more global presence and grow their business through international expansion. While a company can have numerous reasons for entering foreign markets, we will be focusing specifically on how Tesla can benefit from establishing a manufacturing plant in India and launching a marketing campaign in Singapore.
The purpose of the manufacturing plant in India is to also serve as Tesla’s international headquarters, which would be located in Chennai. This will position us to receive immediate cost savings in the production of our vehicles and transportation costs to Asian, European, and African countries. Possible threats to entering the Indian market include infrastructure, corruption, and bureaucracy. We also believe the improvements in India’s infrastructure through the AMP (automotive mission plan) agreement and our countries commitment to support our automobile industry stakeholders will make selling electric vehicles in India a very profitable market for the future.
Tesla should enter Singapore via EV test beds to qualify for a six-year vehicle tax exemption, while building its brand equity to make it more visible to the consumers. If the market condition is correct and the brand development is successful, the next step is opening a wholly owned showcase store that would house Tesla’s sales force, managers, and mechanics who are responsible for advertising, public relations, and services for Singapore. To finance this marketing expansion we believe using your cash on hand is enough to start up a campaign. We estimated the initial investment to be between $4-$6 million and the annually costs would be approximately $1.3 to $2 million. Tesla should see positive returns within five years based on our sales estimates. This entry strategy accounts for threats such as cultural differences, strict government regulations, and competition.

Tesla Strategic Position

Our goal is to help you further your international expansion by first understanding your strategic positioning. As an up-and-coming electric vehicle company, your differentiating factor is an “electric car without compromises.” Your Roadster competes with sports cars like Porsche and Ferrari while having the energy efficiency of a Prius, and we believe this to be a huge advantage against other sports cars in the market. However we understand that the Roadster is a means to generate revenue for the development of a more affordable family car, also providing zero emission electric power generation options. With these goals in mind, Tesla is scanning for opportunities around the world to minimize cost and maximize revenue. You currently have facilities in the United States and throughout Europe where parts are being manufactured and assembled. Since you have limited resources, you must be very selective of the location for your expansion.
Before we go into further detail about potential locations, let us evaluate Tesla Motors’ strengths and weaknesses for a better assessment of your expansion strategy. You are on the cutting edge of battery electric technology with good engineering and technology research capability. You build many of your own components in-house so it is tough for your competitors to duplicate. You have a first mover advantage by being the first company to offer a practical fully electric sports car, recognized by Arnold Schwarzenegger, former governor of California, and Jay Leno, late night T.V host. These are the high-end consumers you are targeting but they are a vast minority of the general public contributing to Tesla low brand recognition. You also do not have the economy of scale because of your limited resources. Those are the strength and weaknesses of your company that we must consider in your expansion.
The decision to expand into India signifies your commitment and belief in the long-term success of Tesla in international markets. India boasts one of fastest growing economies in the world with a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of $1.4 trillion in 2009. They are also simultaneously working on improving their countries infrastructure to be more favorable for automobile manufacturing, research and development, and business through the India’s Automotive Mission Plan (AMP) 2006-2016. Due to its geo-centric location to the Asian market and its existing environment for multiple big name automobile manufacturers, Chennai, India will serve as our international headquarters. This facility will serve as a location where we can conduct further R&D, final vehicle assembly, quality control, and administrative tasks for cars being purchased in the Asian markets. Due to the largely to the lack of quality roads in India which inhibit the growth of docking stations and non existent government tax breaks for alternative energy vehicles, our immediate efforts in India will not be focused on sales but rather operations. We do believe though that with the AMP, rapidly growing GDP, and decreasing trade barriers, India will eventually prove to be a very lucrative automotive market in the future.
With your decision to expand your operation into India, we believe Singapore is another great market to enter to generate revenue. Singapore is an island state with a GDP of $303.7 billion in 2010. It is one of the most densely populated countries with approximately five million people on 694 km2 of land. Due to its geography, Singapore has limited options for deploying alternative energy like wind and solar on a large scale. Despite this disadvantage it is committed to bringing about reliable, sustainable and competitively priced energy to support economic growth and a greener tomorrow. The government is offering tax incentives for environmentally friendly cars with a 40% rebate of the open market value of the vehicle if eligible.

Motives for Expanding into India

The motives that drove our decision to open an international headquarters in Chennai, India was driven by three primary factors. The most immediate benefit, was the abundant amount of low-cost technical and managerial talent that India produces on a consistent basis. These low labor costs will provide us an immediate expansion in our production possibilities frontier for producing cars while also cutting down drastically on the plants fixed operating costs. Secondly, we found that both the historical data for the return on other foreign investments in India and their ability to successfully trade throughout India to be a sound indicator for predicting our success. Opening our plant in Chennai, India, an automobile hotbed for foreign companies, will allow us to benefit immediately from the cluster effect by receiving associated cost savings and forcing us to innovate to remain competitive. Lastly, the legal framework in India will offer protection for our investment, flexible financial management, and fair process for any issues that may arise.

Low Manufacturing Labor Costs
In 2010, India’s labor costs rose approximately 20% and surpassed China’s average manufacturing costs by reaching USD 2.51 per hour to USD 2.68 per hour. India as a whole has seen how the recovery of domestic demand, inflation, and new government policies have lead to greater labor costs for foreign companies across the board. Although there is some unpredictability in the growth rate for India’s labor costs, our country will still hold a comparative advantage in labor costs to the US automotive labor market. While our overall manufacturing costs are higher than China’s, our autoworkers are compensated 18% less at USD 3.30/hour and USD 4.02 respectively . In addition, approximately 36% of our labor costs are contributed to employee benefits such as “Provident fund (social security), survivor insurance, pension contributions, state mandated 13th month pay, and double pay for overtime”. We believe these large contributions to our employees’ benefits will reduce our risk for public backlash and improve our image in the eyes of human rights activist who often pounce at abusive employers.
There has also been a consistent positive correlation between long-term growth rates and the low-dependency ratio’s associated with a relatively youthful population. “According to a recent long-term growth forecast from banking group Goldman Sachs, demographic patterns may put Indian growth well ahead of Chinese growth by mid-century”.
Comparatively, US workers in Ford or GM earned $27 an hour plus benefits which means we cut down on labor costs by over 87%. As Tesla most recently reported in their Dec 31 2010 SEC filling to have 213 manufacturing department employees, we expect for this number to be at approximately 70 for our India headquarters. Our manufacturing plant will be significantly smaller than our US plant, and thus will not required as many workers. While the hourly pay rates for Tesla employees are likely to be higher than the average automotive laborer figures for both countries due to a greater requirement of skill and knowledge, we kept both figures constant in an attempt to account for this difference.

Low Administrative, IT, and Knowledge Based Positions Costs

We believe that India’s large and growing workforce population, many of whom can speak English, will benefit us tremendously in terms of cutting down on employment costs. The education system of India is extremely large and caters to millions of citizens. According to our Constitution, education is a fundamental right, which demonstrates the importance of education in India. In recent years, we have been committed to progress. We have increased our primary education and literacy rates to include approximately two-thirds of the population. Additionally, India boasts the third largest number of students in higher education in the world . In 2011, 582,000 engineers and 265,000 polytechnics graduated from college . The high number of college graduates provides a larger pool of skilled and educated workers. This provides us with a very large pool of new graduates whom we could potentially train and employ in our factories each year.
Tesla reported $84 million in selling, general, and administrative expenses for 2010. Since we cannot pinpoint the allocation of these expenses, we will estimate that their manufacturing employees labor costs accounted for approximately $14million . We expect our international headquarters to be smaller, and thus only have 70 labor employees, with $462,000 in yearly labor costs.
We then assume that the $70 million in other costs can be reduced through India’s cheap labor force. Annual salaries for junior resources range from $5,000 to $9,000 US dollars while senior resources range from $17,000-$40,000.Tesla has 686 non-manufacturing labor employees in the US . We also assume the international headquarters will require 200 non-manufacturing labor employees total with 20% being senior resource managers. We then take the high end of the range for the given Indian salaries because our product requires a higher knowledge of skill and knowledge. This means 150 junior resources earning $9,000 per year with 50 senior resources earning $40,000 per year. This results in $3,350,000 in annual abor costs for Indian workers. We will also add another $1.5 million on top to compensate US transfer employees who will play a critical role in the total over sight, training, and daily operations in the India headquarters. This results in $4.85 million in non-manufacturing labor costs.

Historical Trends for Chennai India

Major players such as Hyundai, Ford, Nissan and BMW have already established manufacturing plants in Chennai, which is considered by many to quickly becoming the “Detroit” of India. Compared to establishing a manufacturing plant in China, one expert says, “ in lower-volume manufacturing where technology use is more intensive, then India is better”. Since Tesla uses proprietary cutting edge technology and is targeted towards more affluent individuals, you fit especially well into the low-volume, technology intensive criteria. Additionally, India’s average return on investment has historically compared favorably to China’s with a five basis point difference at 19%. Both of the following trends largely link back to the high quantity of quality workers in India that attract high-value manufacturers.
Since there are over dozens of major automobile companies with manufacturing plants in Chennai, there are already highly developed trade links to Europe, Africa, and Asia. Although the ports are very congested in India, Indranil Chowdhury of Volvo says “we find that if you have the right clearing agents, you can ship cargo.” By learning from our competitors, Tesla should be able to quickly adapt to navigating India’s export system as well cut costs through accessibility of new component supplier networks.
Tesla will receive benefits from the many factor endowments that the area possesses. Porter’s diamond reveals that being placed in an area with many related industries will result in cost savings and allow us to produce better output. In addition, the rivalry of competing firms will force us to constantly innovate and prevent us from being lulled into stagnation. The supporting factor conditions in India, which consist of over 1500 engineering colleges and a growing working age population, will also allow us a large pool of qualified candidates to select from. The automobile demand conditions will allow us to spot out trends for electric vehicles in less develop countries as well as potentially capitalize on India’s market if we notice an opportunity. According to the OLI framework, all of the aforementioned factors regarding the benefits of Chennai’s location support our decision for a foreign direct investment in India.

Legal Framework

Our government has made it very easy for foreign companies to set up an automotive plant in our country. Industrial licenses are not required and thus there will be no barriers into our market entry. An FDI of 100% is allowed under the automatic route and additional incentives are granted to set up units in certain areas. Since Chennai falls under the Mahindra City area for Special Economic Zones (SEZ), we will be receiving 100% corporate tax exemption for the first 5 years and 50% corporate tax exemption for the next 10 years . Also, business’s investing over Rs 4000 cr over seven years, or approximately $78 million USD, receive special incentives from the government such as tax cuts, easy land acquisition, and speedy implementation times for projects.
The official business government website of India is very transparent and adamant for their support of investors. They state that , “An effective regulatory and legal framework is indispensable for the proper and sustained growth of the company.” The Companies Act in 1956 and Companies Bill in 2004 have each been revised numerous times in order to provide clear interpretation for foreign businesses and put in place a legal framework that supports rapid economic growth. Combined with the support of the Securities and Exchange Board of India for foreign investors, India clearly stands out as a country who has one of the best legal frameworks to protect investments, facilitate growth, and support foreign investors.

Threats to Entry

Although the UNCTAD World Investment Prospects Survey 2007-09 deemed India the second most favored FDI destination following China , there are still barriers to entry. First, India’s infrastructure and poverty pose the biggest threats to entry. Power, road, rail, and port infrastructure are poorly maintained or non-existent, thus raising cost of production and lowering efficiencies. For instance, unreliable power is a common problem in India. “On average a company can expect nearly 17 significant power outages per month, against one per month in Malaysia and fewer than five in China.” . To compensate, many companies incur the cost of maintaining their own private power supplies. In addition to power, transportation is inadequate. Many of the roads are narrow, congested, and poorly maintained. In 2007, only 41% percent of roads were paved . India’s poor infrastructure could affect Tesla’s ability to efficiently manufacture and transport automobiles.
Also, bureaucracy and corruption have proven to be problematic while doing business in India. Bureaucracy and corruption hinder FDI by increasing costs of doing business, altering the allocating of resources, and wasting valuable time. Regarding bureaucracy, foreign businesses have reported that investment decisions and approvals by Indian government ministries can drag on for long periods of time for no apparent reason. Additionally, over the past few years, many government officials have been condemned under Indian anti-corruption laws . According to Transparency International, India is ranked 87 on the Corruption Perceptions Index 2010 . To help you understand the implications of the ranking, the United States is ranked 22nd and Mexico is ranked 98th. To overcome the India’s obstacles, we recommend Tesla to locate in a SEZ to avoid issues with infrastructure and unreliable administration and bureaucracies.

Automotive Industry and Regulations

“The auto industry in India has really matured. We are very upbeat about India, because we have been growing fast and we think we will go on growing fast.” -Indranil Chowdhury of Volvo.
India’s Automotive Industry has seen great growth in recent years. India’s automobile exports totaled $1.5 billion in 2009. The United States auto component exports to India grew from $210 million in 2004 to $437 million in 2009 . These figures demonstrate to Tesla that to facilitate expansion, India has implemented automotive policies that are conducive to foreign investment and Tesla’s business objectives. Since 2001, India has reduced import restrictions and opened the market. Also, India implemented the Automotive Policy of 2002. The policy permits 100% foreign ownership of automotive and automotive manufacturing firm without a minimum investment. The policy addresses import tariffs, and India’s objective to reduce the high tariffs. In 2003, tariffs were reduced to 30% and in 2005 they were further reduced to 15%. Moreover, in the Automotive Mission Plan 2006 – 2016, the vision statement states “To emerge as the destination of choice in the world for design and manufacture of automobiles and auto components with output reaching a level of $145 billion accounting for more than 10% of the GDP” .
As mentioned above, India further caters to the automotive industry through the creation of Special Economic Zones. The SEZ attract foreign investors by offering tax incentives, access to reliable infrastructure, and assisting with bureaucratic and administrative problems.

Economic Fundamentals and Principles

Government/Politics
The government of India is officially know as the Union Government and was established by the Constitution of India. India is home to the world’s most populous democracy and remains committed to the principles of democracy and rule of law . The political stability of a democracy creates an atmosphere that is conducive to investment, thus eliminating political risk. Although, India’s government promotes democratic ideals, there are still a few issues the government needs to address.
Economic issues that stem from government policy or lack of policy are problematic. For instance, India has little infrastructure, which is needed for long-term investments . Also, corruption and bribery are common practice in the Indian government. The high amount of corruption can increase the cost of doing business and instill mistrust of government officials.

Economy and Financial System
Since the liberalization reforms in 1991, Indian has experienced exponential economic growth. By 2006, India’s growth rate in terms of GDP was 9.2%, second to China. Also, India experienced rapid growth in trade, especially in the manufacturing and service industries. From 1995 to 2005, total merchandise trade and imports of services almost tripled, and exports of services quadrupled . During the deregulation, the economic policy transformed from extremely restrictive to moderately liberal. The new economic regime encourages FDI in almost all economic activities and provides a variety of incentives for foreign investors. Additionally, second generation reforms are aiming to further integrate Indian economy with global economy . India’s new economic policies and accelerated growth provide an ideal environment for Tesla’s objective.
In recent years, India’s financial system has proved to be sound. For instance, during the U.S. economic crisis of 2008, the central bank of India remained relatively unaffected. “India’s banks and financial institutions have not experienced the kinds of losses and write downs that even venerable banks and financial institutions in the Western world have faced.” During the deregulation in the 1990s, we restructured our financial system, resulting in a stable and reliable financial system. In regards to the banking system, Indian banks are owned by the public sector (e.g. state and institution owned banks). The public owned banks create a greater feeling of among our depositors. Our financial system has been deemed “wise,” yet there is still criticism. Although we are deregulating our investment policies, many countries, such as the U.S., believe we are moving too slow and not taking enough risks .

Exchange Rates
India’s exchange rate regime with respect to most foreign currencies is floating. However, the U.S. dollar and Indian rupee exchange rate regime is categorized as a “managed float” . A managed float reduces currency value fluctuations and transaction costs. Due to the changing nature of the market, Tesla will inevitably incur transaction costs when transferring profits to the United States. The transaction costs are a result of market shifts and exchange rate fluctuations. Even the smallest change will create transaction costs because a dollar today is not the same as a dollar tomorrow. Figure 1 lists the USD/IND exchange rates from 2006-10.

Over the years, India has encountered high inflation. For example, in November 2010 and September 2011, the inflation rates were 8.6% and 10.06%, respectively. Additionally, the inflation rates have proven to be unstable. Figure 2 demonstrates the volatility of the Indian inflation rate.

Figure 2

Initially, the high inflation rates will make India an ideal location for Tesla. The India rupee depreciates with inflation causing the U.S. dollar to appreciate, meaning the U.S. dollar has greater value in the Indian economy. This will reduce Tesla’s initial costs because investing in India will be cost effective. However, high inflation rates are not conducive to foreign long-term investment. If inflation continues to increase, the value of the Indian rupee will decrease, resulting in lower returns for your company . Fortunately, the Indian government is working to alleviate the inflation rates in the future, which will be advantageous for Tesla’s long term profits . In regards to the volatility, the unstable exchange rates cause uncertainty, however the fluctuations are not large enough to impede Tesla from entering India.

US/Indian Trade Relations
The United States is one of India’s leading trade partners. India’s exports to U.S. have increased dramatically. The value of these exports has more than doubled from $9.3 billion in 2000 to $18.7 billion in 2005. U.S. exports to India in 2007 totaled $17.5 billion, a 75% increase from the year before. India and the United Stated have recognized the mutual benefits of working together and are committed to improving trade relations. Since 2004, they have formed a “strategic partnership” based on similar values and overlapping interests. From 2000 to 2006, India’s total trade with the United States increased from $12.2 billion to $28.6 billion . In 2006, the U.S. President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Singh agreed to combine efforts to double bilateral trade agreements in three years. Since Bush, President Obama has continued to cultivate relations with Singh. In 2010, Obama and Singh signed numerous trade and defense agreements. The trade agreements were signed to facilitate business developments in India . The positive trade relations between the United States and Indian will foster a healthy business environment that is conducive to Tesla’s company strategy.

Culture

India is a very diverse nation and is host to hundreds of different ethnic groups, religious sectors, races, and social castes. We have 21 official languages including: Hindu, Urdu, Tamil, and English . To Tesla’s advantage, English is the official language of business . Also, English is the primary language of instruction in institutions of higher education. This means that most educated Indian workers will be proficient in English, thus breaking the language barrier between Tesla’s U.S. and Indian employees.
The business culture of India is quite different than the United States. The Indian way of life and work are often interwoven. Religion, fatalism or “karma”, and collectivism are central to the Indian culture inside and outside the workplace. Collectivism or a strong sense of community will have the greatest implications on Tesla’s business. Friendship or clanship is highly valued, which is contrary to the U.S. emphasis on the individual. This group dynamic creates a greater acceptance of hierarchical settings, thus influencing the management style . In most companies, the most senior executives make decisions in a non-participatory way. So, even if an executive makes an incorrect order or decision, the employees listen without opposition. Knowing this information, we recommend Tesla place special attention on the hiring process of the future manager.
When hiring the Head of International Operations in India, the first consideration is whether to hire local or within Tesla. There are advantages and disadvantages in both cases. An Indian manager will understand the local culture, policies, and language, thus making him or her a valuable asset to Tesla. However, a local manager may not uphold or follow Tesla’s business vision and strategies. On the other hand, a Tesla manager would understand the inner workings of Tesla operations and act as a liaison between the U.S. and India. Yet, installing a U.S. manager may result in conflict between Indian employees and management. Since this is your first installation of a foreign manufacturing operation, we recommend employing a U.S. manager. With a U.S. manager, Tesla will have tighter control of quality control, R&D, and company transactions. Additionally, since the headquarters in Chennai would concentrate on operations, local know-how is not as advantageous as it would be for marketing. Furthermore, we encourage employing a candidate that has demonstrated great personal ethics, so he or she can lead by example and create a productive and ethical organization culture.

Ethical Considerations

As mentioned before, corruption and bribery are common practice in India. The U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) has outlawed bribes to foreign government officials in order to gain business. We suggest that Tesla should adapt a zero tolerance policy, similar to BP . This will produce an ethical organization culture, and protect Tesla’s global reputation. To further promote high ethical standards we recommend implementing a Code of Conduct. The Code of Conduct would include a decision making process to ensure all company decision are ethical.
The launch of our manufacturing plant has certain ethical and unethical aspects involved as well. The Kant view would believe that we are using low-wage workers as a means to achieve greater profitability and thus qualify our decision as unethical. On the other hand, it can be seen under the Utilitarian view that our plant will create jobs for Indian workers and help boost the GDP as something that could potentially outweigh the costs of our business, primarily pollution. Since we are paying our workers a fair wage and will not be emitting excessive amounts of fuel relative to other businesses, there should be little media back lack in regards to our ethics, despite not necessarily passing the tests in the Kant and Utilitarian perspective.

Financing Expansion into India

In March 2007, BMW began production at their automobile manufacturing plant in Chennai, India with an initial capacity of 3,000 cars per year . They initially invested approximately US $22 million dollars into the facility and have since expanded their facilities to accommodate for production capacity of 11,000 cars . Due to their high recent sales in the Indian market and their bullish outlook on future domestic sales, BMW will be building an extension to their current plant in order to achieve higher production capabilities. As a result, BMW has agreed to sell us the original portion of their manufacturing plant which we will use as our international headquarters.
The initial factory, which BMW invested $22 million, has since depreciated over the course of its life to $14 million. BMW is also planning on moving $4 million dollars worth of equipment to the new sector of their plant and thus have agreed to a potential sale price with us of $10 million dollars.
Assuming a $2 million dollar down payment on the project and a required return rate of 10% our annual payments thereafter are approximately $2.1 million each year for 10 years, starting a year after purchase .
Although BMW has has agreed to sell us a portion of their left over equipment, we estimate that renovations, building a wall separating the two companies, transfer of operating permits, transfer of emission credits, and buying new assembly equipment will cost us an additional $8 million dollars. We will be able to finance this through the money remaining from our June 2010 IPO that netted us $184.5 million.

Motives for Expansion into Singapore

Singapore has the world’s highest percentage of millionaire households, with 15.5 percent of all households owning at least one million US dollars. These high-income households are the target consumers for the Tesla Roadster. Furthermore this consumer base is also very concentrated due to the population density of Singapore, which allow for cost efficient marketing. For example, billboards would have greater reach and word of mouth travels much faster in such a dense population.
Singapore is the crossroad of businesses worldwide which serve as an excellent location to raise Tesla’s international brand equity. Executives on their business trip would recognize the brand and carry a positive word of mouth back home to their respective country about the Tesla Roadster where demand would follow. This would be the ideal outcome for international marketing.

Automotive Industry and Regulations

Singapore’s auto industry is one of the largest and most sophisticated in Asia. It is considered one of the “cleanest and greenest” countries with one of the highest standards of living in the area. This is due to a highly industrialized business sector, multinational companies, excellent port facilities and land communication systems, as well as airports and sea links connecting the country to the entire world. Located at the crossroads of international shipping and air routes, Singapore has a very strategic location on major sea-lanes. Basically, it is the center for transportation and communication in Southeast Asia.

Automotive Industry
The per capita car ownership rate in Singapore is 12 cars per 100 people. This is small compared to that of the United States, at approximately 78 cars per 100 people. However, Singapore’s passenger car market and sales have been on the rise, as seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3

Source: Frost and Sullivan

Since Singapore is also very environmentally conscious and mainly composed of urban drivers with lesser driver range (due to the size of the city-state), it will likely prove as a feasible market for electric vehicles in coming years.
Currently, Japanese car manufacturers have the largest market share in Singapore. Japanese cars tend to be more environmentally friendly and smaller in size than most, making them very desirable vehicles in Singapore. Our Roadster is similar in that it is an electric vehicle, but it’s differentiated in the fact that it is a high-performance sports vehicle, making us appeal to more high-end consumers.

Automotive Regulations
As previously addressed, the Singaporean government places a 100% tax on car imports into Singapore, which we hope to reduce by negotiating a green tax incentive due to the fact that our Roadster is extremely environmentally friendly. The Special Green Vehicle Rebate provides buyers of electric vehicles with a discount of up to 40%. This rebate reduces the price of cars by a substantial amount for customers and gives them a huge incentive to buy our electric vehicles.
There are a number of vehicle exhaust emission standards in Singapore, established by The Pollution Control Department (PCD) of the Ministry of the Environment. Fortunately, electric cars don’t emit CO2 and thereby our Roadster has already met these standards. In terms of the possible hazardous material within an electric vehicle’s battery, the Tesla Motors Lithium-Ion cells are not hazardous and are landfill safe. The battery packs can also be sold to recycling companies to be recycled at the end of its +100,000-mile lifespan.
The Land Transport Authority, a department of the Singapore government, is making measures to reduce the amount of vehicle use in the country. These regulations that are designed to limit car ownership include the need for a Certificate of Entitlement (COE), which is an expensive certificate with its price based on engine size, sometimes as much as $60,000. Singaporeans bid for the right to own a motor vehicle, and if granted a COE, are allowed to own a car for 10 years, after which they would have to bid for another COE. Since the Tesla Roadster is a luxury vehicle, it appeals to the wealthier residents of Singapore who probably don’t mind paying this fee, since they would most likely already own a car.
Although the Singaporean government places restrictive measures to reduce the number of vehicles on Singapore’s roads, we strongly feel that Tesla could overcome these limits and become a very desirable possession for wealthy Singapore residents.

Economic Fundamentals and Principles

The economy of Singapore is a mixed economy known as the Singapore Model. The Singapore Model strongly advocates free market policies and practices, but involves ample government intervention. This is due to the fact that Singapore has a relatively small domestic market and therefore has to open itself to external markets in order for the economy to thrive. The purpose of Singapore’s government intervention is to safeguard the country from fluctuations in the global market. While government intervention might make managing a hassle, it demonstrates that Singapore is stable and open to foreign markets, and would undoubtedly welcome our appearance. Singapore’s corrupt-free government, advanced infrastructure, and skilled labor force has attracted over 7,000 multinational investments from the United States, Europe, and Japan. This means by investing in Singapore we would be entering a highly developed, non-corrupt, and well-structured investment world, guaranteeing stability and success.
Since Singapore is very welcoming to external markets, we would recommend Tesla invest in a showcase store for direct sales, marketing, public relations, and services. We would not recommend more than one store since Singapore is a city-state with expensive land, and we are only targeting a specific market; also, most purchases are made online and shipped in. However, if the market proves to be lucrative, additional stores can always be opened.

Analysis of Ownership, Location, and Internalization
In terms of Dunning’s OLI framework, we should not license, but instead own our own store in order to keep an owners advantage, since we don’t want our trade or marketing secrets to leak out. The location advantage of Singapore has already been addressed; it is the center for transportation and communication in Southeast Asia and therefore an excellent market to enter. It is also much closer to India than the United States, thus reducing transportation costs by shipping to Singapore from India. Singapore also has a skilled, cheap labor force, which will reduce our costs and needs to train employees. Internalization (selling directly from Singapore as opposed to only online/from abroad) provides another way to reduce potential technological leakage. It also reduces potential for conflicts of interest and gives us an actual physical presence for our customers, as people would be able to walk by our storefronts and see our cars, as well as test-drive our cars.

Exchange Rate
The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) manages Singapore’s managed float exchange rate. It manages the Singapore dollar (S$) exchange rate to prevent extreme fluctuations by maintaining it within an undisclosed target band. The Singapore dollar is allowed to appreciate and depreciate on factors such as world inflation and domestic price pressures. This means that its value changes with the world market, and in turn is the safest type of exchange rate to have to do business with.
Since 1981, the Singapore dollar has been appreciating against the US dollar, as seen in Figure 4 below. While this means it would cost us more to invest now than before it would have before, it is one of our more inexpensive markets, compared to those we have entered in Europe. Figure 4 also shows how the Singaporean economy is growing steadily, indicating it is a financially stable market to enter.

Trade with the United States
Currently, the US is Singapore’s largest source of foreign investments, with over 1,500 US firms operating in Singapore, accounting for 11.2% of new foreign investments in the manufacturing sector in 2008. Singapore is also among the 15th largest trading partners of the US. Within the last year, US trade with Singapore has also been on a rise as seen in Figure 5 below. In 2003, the United States signed the US-Singapore Free Trade Agreement, which lowered tariffs and fostered a deepening of the bilateral relationship. This is beneficial to Tesla in the sense that US-Singapore trade is in good standing and planning on improving. Therefore, you won’t have to worry about the development of poor trade relationships.

The four official languages of Singapore are Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and English. It would be good practice if we could adopt a native speaker of each language in our Sales offices so we can appeal on a more personal level with our potential customers. This would make developing rapport with our customers easier and hopefully result in greater sales figures. Singapore also has a large blend of people from Malay, Chinese, Indian, and European descent. To adapt to the wide array of cultures in the area, we will prepare a report for our sales team that covers the main cultural differences of potential customers and gestures that could possibly be determined as offensive. We believe that Tesla can maximize sales and avoid cultural miscommunication through these two policies.

Ethical Considerations

Our ultimate reason and end goal for choosing to market in Singapore comes down to profitability. We would be acting unethically under the Kantian view because we are ultimately using the wealthy members of Singapore as a means to an end. However, under the Kantian view, nearly all businesses with the exception of non-profits can be argued as being unethical. While businesses can strive to promote environmental causes or support human rights movements, ultimately no business can exist without achieving profits. Therefore, I believe the best metric to judge the ethics of our decision to enter Singapore would be the Utilitarian viewpoint. Under Utilitarian ethics, which state that consequences determine the moral worth of our actions, our electric vehicles provide an extremely valuable social benefit to the country. The sales of our vehicles and their use will reduce carbon emissions and help decrease smog in a country that ranks 6th in the world for tons of carbon per person. We are also marketing our vehicles towards the wealthy, so the costs of our business decision are minimal in terms of reducing the quality of lives for our customers. Since the environmental benefits we provide their society greatly outweigh the costs of the profits we receive from their wealthy consumers, our decision to launch a sales effort in Singapore is very ethical under the Utilitarian viewpoint.

EV Test Beds

Singapore launched its electric vehicle test-bed in June 2011 to decide whether it is feasible for mass adoption. Chee Hong Tat, chief executive of the Energy Market Authority (EMA), is optimistic about the EV test-bed as it could help Singapore “push towards a cleaner, greener and more sustainable transport system, and a better living environment.” To make this test successful, they are inviting the private sector players to participate in the development and testing process. This is an opportunity for Tesla to introduce the Roadster to Singapore as well as build brand equity through the media coverage. Furthermore, the participants are exempt from vehicle taxes, road tax, and excise duty for the purpose of research and development. The tax waiver will last for an initial period of six years. This is an incentive to encourage more participation from companies interested in helping Singapore achieve a better living environment through green technology.

Financing the Expansion into Singapore

The majority of your orders are made via website or by phone so the cost of capital to enter Singapore is very small. However, it would be beneficial to set up a few stores/showrooms for direct sales if this market proves to be profitable. Base on your 10-k, it seems like you are more than capable of opening at least one store in Singapore using the cash on hand. Loans and IPO’s are not necessary for the expansion into Singapore.
We do not want you to put out substantial investments until we can be sure that Singapore is a place where your marketing effort pays off, therefore we finance the expansion first an investment in market assessment, which you are currently doing by hiring us. The next step is e-marketing to leverage search engine optimization and search engine marketing to increase visibility. The cost of both is fairly low. If there is potential, then brand building is the next step, which is more costly. A showcase store/office with a sales force and mangers is needed in order to effectively develop Tesla’s brand through advertising and public relations in order to create customer relationships and encourage positive word of mouth. Taking into consideration the land and building costs, as well as taxes and overhead, the annual costs would fall within the range of $1.3 to $2 million with a $4 to $6 million initial investment. We estimate the unit sales of the Tesla Roadster to be 70 cars per year with the tax exemption and 55 cars with tax incentive (40% rebate). Depending on whether you can obtain a tax exemption or just a tax incentive, Tesla will break even in 3.5 years and 5 years respectively, assuming consistent sales number for the Roadster and a 20% profit margin. If we incorporate the sales of the Model S, starting in mid 2012, we expect the break-even point to be lower and Tesla to start seeing profits in the Singapore market by the end of 2015.

Porter’s 5-Force Analysis

Barriers to Entry
Cultural differences have a significant influence in the way that we market our product and can be a major obstacle to your entry. The Singaporean consumers are very skeptical to embrace new technology especially in terms of automotive application. They are highly selective due to the high cost of owning a vehicle in Singapore because of all the taxes and license costs. To overcome this barrier, we must positively shape their preference and attitudes towards high end electric to justify the high investment. Government support is crucial in doing so. Luckily, the government of Singapore is pushing towards greener technology such as electric vehicles by offering green incentive taxes and launching the EV test-beds. We believe the EV test-beds will be successful, initiating the next generation of energy efficient vehicles in Singapore. Therefore, the threat to entry is moderate.

Competition
The competitive environment in Singapore is similar to that of the United States with the major players being Toyota Motor Corporation, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., Hyundai Motor Co., and Kia Motors Corporation . They are competitors in the aspect that they all offer at least one type of energy efficient cars, whether it is hybrid or electric. Tesla is further differentiated by being a high performance electric car with a higher price tag, but this in turn creates more competition for Tesla as they are now also competing with sports cars like Ferrari and Porsche. The biggest advantage the competitors have over Tesla is brand recognition. Consumers do not simply spend over $110,000 on a car they never heard of. We evaluate the threat of competition to be high.

Buyer Power
Since the Tesla Roadster is considered a luxury good, the demand is very inelastic so consumers are willingly to pay the high price. Furthermore, there is no similar class of car like the Roadster so there is no basis for the consumer to negotiate with. Unless they buy in mass quantities, the buyer power is low.

Supplier Power
The major supplier in this case is human capital. Motivated sales people and managers are crucial for effective marketing. They affect the success of Tesla in Singapore. Sales people can be trained, but a good sales manager is hard to come by. Assuming that the Singapore market is successful, the manager would have high bargaining power later on but for now it is low.

Substitutes
An alternative to Electric vehicles can be hybrid vehicles or even public transportation in the broad sense of environmental friendly transport. In terms of an electric sports car, there are no substitutes. It highly depends on your qualification for viable substitutes. We came to the conclusion that the threat level for substitutes is moderate due to the likelihood that your high end consumer base demands personal vehicle over public transportation.

Recommendations

India-Recommendation for operational expansion
Based by on your financial report, we noted Tesla has sufficient savings to invest in an acquisition of BMW’s manufacturing plant in Chennai, India. We believe this is the fastest way and most cost effective way to start up our production abroad of the Tesla Roadster as well as the Model S early 2012. We recommend Tesla purchases BMW’s manufacturing plant for NPV $10 million, which can be financed over the course of ten years. The manufacturing plant will operate as Tesla’s international headquarter where it will serve as a central distribution center for our shipments to Asian, African, and European markets. Purchase of the plant will allow you to take immediate advantage of being placed into an Special Economic Zone (SEZ) where we can avoid certain risks associated with entry and quickly begin production of our vehicles overseas. The proposed agreement in place with BMW will meet our target required return rate and provide us with a projected net present value of $5.7 million (please see attached excel spreadsheet and appendix for details). We should make this purchase swiftly to start receiving the immediate benefits of reduced operating costs.
In regards to hiring our Head of International Operations, the higher up positions such as VP of manufacturing and VP of research and development, we recommend promoting from within Tesla to ensure that we can maintain our strategic vision and consistent operating procedures. To address the cultural differences, we suggest hiring seasoned managers from within India to oversee the work of local manufacturing laborers and serve as a connection between laborers and the executives.

Singapore- Recommendation for marketing expansion
We highly recommend using the EV test beds as an entry method because the tax waiver would significantly lower the price of the Roadster to around $110,000 as opposed to $220,000. This would make it more accessible and appealing to the target consumers. With a $220,000 price tag, the threat of substitutes and competition are much higher. At that price you are competing with Ferrari and Porsche, who have much higher brand recognition in Singapore than Tesla. It is crucial for Tesla to have a price advantage to be competitive given your lower brand recognition. It is also a strategic move to increase brand equity through media coverage and government support. The media and government of Singapore have a strong influence over its citizens and will have an important role in the success of Tesla in Singapore. The EV test beds is an opportunity for Tesla to demonstrate its willingness to help Singapore achieve a greener tomorrow and develop a network of supporters to propel Tesla through Singapore’s tough automotive market.
After the initial effort to promote Tesla through the EV test beds, the next step is to open up an office/showroom in Singapore with a mechanics, sales force, and managers directly in charge of servicing, public relations, and marketing. This store is wholly owned like any other Tesla showrooms, however it is important for the manager to understand Singapore’s culture to effectively market to target consumers, establish relationships with consumers, and train the sales force. The manager should be hire locally, someone who really knows how to navigate the Singapore market and understand the consumers.
This initial investment would cost approximately $5 million, which includes the cost of land, building, licenses, and taxes. Annual costs would be higher in the beginning because of the initial amount of marketing and that comes to about $2 million. The projected sales of the Tesla Roadster and Model have a growth rate of 3% and 7% respectively. These are conservative numbers and could change depending on our marketing efforts. Tesla should achieve a net present value by the end of 2015.

Appendix

Financial Model Assumptions and Calculations

We used $110,000 for our price of Roasters and $60,000 for our model S price.

Revenues from India Sales
We do not have a marketing plan in place for India or intend to immediately start selling vehicles. We do plan to start selling automobile vehicles in India starting in 2016, after the AMP agreement is completed and the countries infrastructure has improved. At the moment, we plan on selling these vehicles through online orders, and thus do not incur any additional costs.
We estimate they will sell 10 Roadsters in 2016, increasing by 10% per year.
We estimate they will sell 50 Model S, increasing by 20% per year.

Revenues from Singapore Sales
Although there is a 100% tax rate on vehicles imported into Singapore, we add this completely onto our car sales price, thus not affecting our profit per car. So we essentially ignore this tax in our financial report since the additional amount we earn in revenue, immediately gets deducted as a cost.
Roadster 35 cars increasing by 3% each year over the span of 10 yrs.
For the Model S, 110 cars increasing by 7% each year over the span of 10 yrs starting in mid 2012.

Revenue from rest of Asia, Africa, and Europe
Although we currently sell to these markets, we will count our cost savings from delivering cars with a closer production facility to be revenue when determining the NPV of this decision. We estimate a savings of $200,000 dollars a year with a growth rate of 9%

Additional Revenues from rest of AAE sales
We expect additional sales to these markets of $25 million per year with a 10% increase.

Cost of Labor
See calculations in article

Cost of Factory Automotive Sales
We factored in costs as 80% of sales. This is reasonable based on the financial reports from Tesla’s annual report which reported approximately $97 million in annual sales with costs of $86 million for 2010. The lower cost of sales can be attributed from cost savings in India.

Building payment
We used $2 million annual, based on calculations from earlier.

Depreciation
We used straight line depreciation of $1 million dollars per year.

Income tax
The effective foreign corporate tax rate in India is 42.23%
SEZ’s in India have a 100% corporate tax exemption for first 5 years. 50% corporate tax exemption for the next 10 years.

Capital Expenditure
Based on calculations made earlier, we came up with an initial investment cost of $10 million.

Discount Factor
In both our negotiations with BMW and our own projected calculations, we have decided to use a required return rate of 10%, rounded up from 9.8% which is the historical average for the S and P 500 .

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From the reporters group:

“With the failure of Fisker and the discovery of the cover-up of loan defaults and Solyndra-inspired financial tracking investigation has gone into high gear, reports Wall Street Journal investigator. 6 Silicon Valley venture capital companies, McKinsey, 4+ major Washington law firms and others are being tracked for every expenditure and receipt from 2005 to today. The staff and associates of each of those entities, and their personal accounts, emails and credit cards are not under the purview of the investigation. Loan default cover-ups and illegal manipulations of funding terms are being investigated with expanded investigator resources now that Solyndra2/Fisker has taken place. Charges have been filed that state that at the time that Tesla applied they were nearly bankrupt but the accounting was manipulated to show a brighter picture than the actual debt-ratio metrics would have shown without fancy paper dancing, per the investigators.”

Tesla Selling cars? “No Way”, says Industry Expert

A major industry operations lead from GM has now been in the news reporting that “GM makes and sells 2,000 cars a day”. Tesla spent thousands of times more making each car to only sell a few thousand cars after ten years and nearly a billion dollars.. hmm… What doesn’t add up?

U.S. Senate Nails Tesla

From The U.S. Senate Hearing Testimony Today:

“Whether Tesla remains profitable remains to be seen and because many of the
projects for both DOE ATVM and loan guarantees are in relatively
early stages of development,labeling them successes is premature
and if they do go bankrupt, the taxpayer funds are merely providing a lifeline.
However,if Tesla’s electric vehicles are the wave of the future, they should have secured investment and loans through the private sector.”

Understanding Tesla’s Life Threatening Battery Decisions

SEEKING ALPHA- John Peterson
Nov 22 2013

In the last couple of months, electric cars from Tesla Motors (TSLA) have had three collision-related battery fires that were widely covered by the media. Last week, the NHTSA decided to conduct a formal investigation of these incidents. While Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk immediately went on the offensive arguing that Tesla’s BEVs have a lower fire risk than gasoline powered cars, the question an increasing number of investors are asking is “Why has Tesla had three battery fires in a fleet of 17,000 BEVs while Nissan hasn’t had any fires in its fleet of over 90,000 BEVs?” The answer is simple. Tesla’s battery decisions significantly increased battery risks for both the customer and the company.

My primary resource for the discussion in this article is a 2012 study published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory titled “Vehicle Battery Safety Roadmap Guidance.” Since the roadmap provides far more scientific detail than most investors need or want, I’ll focus on the general themes that impact investment risk and leave the electrochemical and engineering minutiae for professionals.

The generic term “lithium-ion battery” includes at least a half-dozen varieties that range from relatively safe iron phosphate formulations to relatively unstable cobalt oxide formulations. I use the word relatively because no lithium-ion battery is 100% safe. All lithium-ion batteries will burn if the cell is punctured. In general, fires resulting from a punctured cell are the least violent. Lithium-ion batteries can also ignite spontaneously if debris left over from the manufacturing process pierces a 15- to 25-micron separator and creates an internal short circuit. In those cases, which are referred to as “field failure events,” the internal short circuit ignites materials inside the cell and causes internal temperatures to spike to a few hundred degrees centigrade in seconds. At that point, the cell ruptures feeding additional oxygen to the fire. In rare unexplained cases, internal temperatures to spike to a couple thousand degrees centigrade in seconds, which suggests that thermite reactions might be taking place.

The failure mechanisms in lithium-ion batteries are not well understood because it’s darned near impossible to extinguish a lithium-ion battery fire. In the event of a fire, the best first responders can do is try to cool the surrounding pack to keep the fire from spreading. What we do know is that punctured cells react less violently than cells that have a field-failure event and that field failure events are less violent than other failures that some experts attribute to thermite reactions.

Since the thermal energy released by a burning lithium-ion battery is up to three times greater than the electrical energy the battery could release in a normal discharge cycle, cell punctures and field failure events can be a very big deal as increased temperatures in one cell propagate to adjacent cells causing them to go into thermal runaway. The phenomenon is like lighting one side of a matchbook on fire. Once the first one goes, the others are sure to follow. One recent Tesla fire in Yucatan Mexico was captured in a YouTube video that shows how the process of lithium-ion battery fratricide unfolds in a large battery pack. The video begins with what appears to be a modest fire in a couple of punctured battery modules. As the temperature builds, other modules reach the thermal runaway point and explode. During the grand finale, several modules join the party and explode at the same time. If the incident didn’t involve a $100,000 car and a real life accident, it would be a great special effect for Hollywood.

Tesla’s first risky battery choice was picking cells with high energy density and a less desirable safety profile than the low energy density cells chosen by all of the other automakers.

Its second risky battery choice was ignoring the laws of large numbers.

Field-failure events are very rare and while I haven’t been able to find detailed statistics for the 18650 cells Tesla buys from Panasonic, the NREL report noted:

“Field failures arising from manufacturing defects that cause internal short circuits have very low probabilities of occurrence (estimates for 18650-size cells that fail catastrophically are 1 in 10 million cells to 1 in 40 million cells). While this may be reassuring for manufacturers of portable electronics, EV and HEV battery packs may have thousands of cells and up to 1,000 times more stored energy, making even this small failure rate unacceptable.”

The battery pack in a Tesla Model S uses about 7,000 high-energy 18650 cells that are more prone to field-failure events than safer lithium-ion chemistries. Since each cell in the battery pack represents an independent field failure risk, the risk of a catastrophic field failure event at the battery pack level is:
•One in 1,429 if you assume a 1 in 10 million risk at the cell level;
•One in 2,857 if you assume a 1 in 20 million risk at the cell level; and
•One in 5,714 if you assume a 1 in 40 million risk at the cell level.

Nissan, in contrast, uses 192 large format lithium-ion battery cells in the Leaf. That factor alone reduces its catastrophic battery pack failure risk by about 98%.

Some of the more troubling aspects of the NREL report included observations that:

“When discussing battery safety, it is important to understand that batteries contain both an oxidizer (cathode) and fuel (anode as well as electrolyte) in a sealed container. Combining fuel and oxidizer is rarely done due to the potential of explosion (other examples include high explosives and rocket propellant), which is why the state of charge (SOC) is a very important variable. Lower SOCs reduce the potential of the cathode oxidizing and the anode reducing. Under normal operation, the fuel and oxidizer convert the stored energy electrochemically (i.e., chemical to electrical energy conversion with minimal heat and negligible gas production). However, if electrode materials are allowed to react chemically in an electrochemical cell, the fuel and oxidizer convert the chemical energy directly into heat and gas. Once started, this chemical reaction will likely proceed to completion because of the intimate contact of fuel and oxidizer, becoming a thermal runaway. Once thermal runaway has begun, the ability to quench or stop it is nil.”

“Although much study has gone into understanding and modeling the lifetime of cells with aging, little work has been done on the effects of aging on thermal stability and abuse tolerance.”

“USABC goals, in line with the DOE research program for HEVs, are a calendar life of 15 years for HEVs and 10 years for EVs. A cycle lifetime of up to 1,000 cycles at 80% depth of discharge is also required. Little or no safety testing has been performed on cells approaching these lifetime limits. There are valid concerns about the stability of the active materials, separators, and possible reactions involving new degradation or contamination products.”

“(H)igher energy cells have a stronger response to abuse events and usually have poorer safety performance.”

Batteries in an electric car are maintained at a high state of charge to maximize driving range. Unfortunately, that practice also maximizes the potential for a field failure event. Since Tesla wanted its cars to have the longest possible driving range with the lowest possible battery weight, it chose a relatively unstable high-energy battery chemistry while its competitors who make electric cars with shorter ranges chose safer and more stable chemistries. Since Tesla wanted to keep its battery costs low and take advantage of a global capacity glut for 18650 cells, it decided to use 7,000 small format cells in its battery pack while more experienced automakers paid premium prices for large format automotive grade cells that reduce the impact of the law of large numbers.

All of Tesla’s public talking points on the three fires focus on the collision-related nature of the battery pack failures. The statistics in the NREL report indicate that a catastrophic pack failure rate of 1 in 6,000 would be just about right if Tesla was using a safer low-energy chemistry like lithium iron phosphate.

If the NHTSA concludes that the fires were attributable to Tesla’s risky choices of high energy density batteries in 7,000 cell packs instead of road debris, the impact on Tesla will be life threatening. The current market price of Tesla’s common stock does not, in my opinion, reflect this real and substantial short-term survival risk.

Outing SHILL REPORTERS who are compensated for rigged stories on Tesla

We have received a number of emails from readers who are disclosing reporters who are “shills”.

A “shill” is a reporter who writes a story that is unusually favorable to another party when all of the current forensic, law enforcement, majority media, public disclosure and evidence says the opposite.

Angie H says- “Tamara Rutter on Motley Fool seems to be obviously in bed with these guys”.

Pam K writes- “Most everybody at the San Jose Mercury News writing about Tesla specifically avoids discussing or investigating any of the issues that have come to light. The owners must be friends with Musk.”

Rogers L.- “On CNN Paul Lamonica is very biased on Tesla and never discusses the sour news facts on them.”

Barnie writes- “John Rosevear at the Fool shows that he is a fool for shilling for Tesla”

Embry writes- “Think Progress pretty much works for Tesla”

Carl says- “Leilani Munter AKA Carbon Free Girl posts as a blogger but is a shill for Tesla”

Sam J. provides- “Kevin Bullis at MIT Technology Review is so obviously working for Tesla in his shill reporting of them!”

Stock Analysts Say Tesla is Doomed.

Here is one example of the new perspective on Tesla by the Stock market. Even though Tesla investors cluster-buy stock when there are media reviews, in order to “pump”, or over-inflate it, the truth is coming out:

By John Peterson of Seeking Alpha

Over the last few weeks electric vehicle aficionados have been beside themselves with glee over reports that Tesla Motors (TSLA) will report a net profit on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis for the first quarter of 2013. Since the news broke on March 31st, the stock has gapped up from $37.89 to an all-time high of $52.92.

Few commenters and even fewer investors understand that Tesla’s Q1 income guidance is little more than an epic April Fools prank, an aberration attributable to the confluence of non-recurring factors that will leave Tesla solidly in the red for the next two years.

The two big drivers of Tesla’s Q1 earnings will be:

A one-time non-cash gain of $11 million arising from the reversal of a derivative warrant liability associated with the acceleration of Tesla’s DOE loan; and
An estimated $20 million in ZEV credits that have already saturated the market for 2013 and beyond, and effectively destroyed the value of future ZEV credits.
When Tesla borrowed $465 million under the Department of Energy’s ATVM loan program, it issued a warrant that gave the government a right to buy up to 3.1 million shares of common stock at a price of roughly $8 per share. In accordance with GAAP, it recognized an operating expense for the fair market value of the warrant and booked a related long-term liability. When Tesla amended the terms of its ATVM loan in early March, the acceleration of its payment schedule reduced the estimated value of the DOE’s warrant by $11. That reduction of an estimated future liability will be reported as non-recurring income in Q1. Without the warrant liability reversal, there would be no first quarter GAAP net income.

A more troubling dynamic is the role of ZEV credits in Tesla’s past, current and future operating results.

During 2012, Tesla received $40.5 million from the sale of ZEV and GHG credits to automakers. In an April 18th research note Morgan Stanley estimated that Tesla’s ZEV credits for Q1 would be over $20 million, but fall in future quarters.

Something about the two numbers didn’t add up for me. During 2012, Tesla delivered about 2,950 vehicles and received roughly $13,725 per unit in additional revenue from sales of ZEV and GHG credits. In Q1, however, Tesla delivered 4,750 vehicles and Morgan Stanley thinks they’ll only receive $4,200 per unit in ZEV and GHG credits. It was enough to make me ask, “Why are Tesla’s expected ZEV and GHG credit values cratering?

I found the answer in a 2010 report from the Natural Resources Defense Council titled, “The Zero Emission Vehicle Program, An Analysis of Industry s Ability to Meet the Standards,” which used this graph to forecast annual demand for ZEV credits and the available supply of credits over time.

While the NRDC did not assign a specific number to aggregate national demand for ZEV credits during the 2012 to 2014 time frame, an eyeball estimate of 50,000 credits per year is pretty close. Through the end of 2012, the graph projected that aggregate demand for ZEV credits would exceed available supplies, creating a robust sellers market. From 2013 onward, the graph projected that supply would exceed demand by a modest to wide margin, creating an anemic buyers market.

While Tesla was the primary beneficiary of the seller’s market that existed in 2012, the benefits beyond Q1 of 2013 will most likely be limited to non-existent.

The most important thing to understand about ZEV credits is that the number of credits per car varies with battery pack size. The following table from the NRDC report summarizes the five credit classes that existed in 2010.

Based on the NRDC table, it appears that every car Tesla delivers generates a minimum of four ZEV credits. While I’ve been told that Tesla earns five ZEV credits when it sells a Model S with an 85 kWh battery pack, I haven’t found definitive regulatory confirmation of that number. So I classify it as credible rumor rather than absolute fact.

In the first quarter of 2013, automakers other than Tesla sold a total of 13,063 plug-in vehicles that generated something on the order of 30,000 ZEV credits. The 4,750 cars sold by Tesla increased the available supply of ZEV credits by 20,000. Unless there’s been a massive surge in ZEV requirements over the last two years, the ZEV credit market for 2013 is already saturated and the ZEV credit revenue that reduced Tesla’s 2012 loss by $40.5 million and will turn a large Q1 operating loss into an insignificant GAAP profit will fall to approximately zero in Q2.

When you eliminate the combined impact of the warrant liability reversal and the non-recurring ZEV credit sales, Tesla’s Q1 net loss from recurring business activity will be about $30 million, as opposed to the anticipated GAAP net income of roughly $2 million.

April Fools!

In its recent research note, Morgan Stanley predicted that Tesla would report a net loss of $108 million for 2013 followed by a net loss of $43 million for 2014. Investors who are buying Tesla stock for an eye-watering 39.4 times book value are in for a very rude awakening.

Tesla has some big problems. This month it posted a loss of $38 million and its shares fell 16%. On top of that, it’s got battery issues.

The company, which got $465 million from Obama, makes electric cars which depend on wiring together 7,000 laptop batteries together. This is just as clumsy and unwieldy as a solution as it sounds. For one thing, laptop batteries are expensive. And it’s a clunky solution.

Obama donor Elon Musk, who got his buddy to trash the space program to give his Space X company a shot at the market, is talking up some giga solution, but for the moment Tesla can’t be much more than a niche company for people who like to waste money to have a car they can use as a talking point in California.

Obama’s battery factory push has failed. Musk is probably thinking that he can pry some more taxpayer cash out of Obama to build a battery factory, like the ones that Obama already subsidized. Considering Obama’s appetite for doing favors for donors, he’s probably right. But that doesn’t mean it will work.

And meanwhile an investigation just opened into Tesla over its battery fires. (Apparently wiring together thousands of laptop batteries to power a car isn’t that great of a solution.)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said it would launch a formal investigation into recent fires that destroyed two Tesla Motors Inc. Model S electric cars that had run over metal debris.

“The agency’s investigation was prompted by recent incidents in Washington state and Tennessee that resulted in battery fires due to undercarriage strikes with roadway debris,” the agency said in a statement. The probe would determine whether the vehicle has a defect that makes it dangerous to operate and could result in a recall and remedy.

Over a five-week period, two Model S sedans burned after hitting large pieces of metal on the highway in the U.S. Neither driver was injured. NHTSA declined to open an investigation after the first incident. There was a third fire in Mexico reported after a high-speed crash.

Musk then did what he does best, court publicity and make loud statements of dubious accuracy.

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk claimed that the automaker requested the investigation to refute fears that electric cars were more prone to fires than other vehicles.

But the NHTSA disputed that, saying its decision was an independent process.

“In regards to Tesla, the agency notified the automaker of its plans to open a formal investigation and requested their cooperation,” the agency said, “which is standard agency practice for all investigations.”

So Musk went on to suggest that Tesla’s rep was the only thing that could save mankind from extinction.

“If a false perception about the safety of electric cars is allowed to linger, it will delay the advent of sustainable transport and increase the risk of global climate change,” Musk wrote in a post to his blog on the Tesla website Monday night.

Err okay.

No doubt, Obama can fix this for him after the next OFA fundraiser.

Tesla fans will crow that the company repaid its debt and that it’s unfair to call it government subsidized. It’s no longer Obama subsidized, that’s true. It still however is government subsidized.

Tesla didn’t generate a profit by selling sexy cars, but rather by selling sleazy emissions “credits,” mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements.

Absent this shakedown of potential car buyers, Tesla would have lost $57 million, or $11,400 per car. As the company sold 5,000 cars in the quarter, though, $13,600 per car was paid by other manufacturers, who are going to pass at least some of that cost on to buyers of their products. Folks in the new car market are likely paying a bit more than simply the direct tax subsidy.

So basically if you buy a real car in California, you’re subsidizing Tesla’s crony capitalist vehicles for celebs. This makes Musk’s campaign for direct sales hypocritical. He’s only against restrictive government monopolies that hurt consumers when he’s not the one profiting from them.

More to the point, Tesla doesn’t have a business model for selling cars, but for selling emission credits. Tesla isn’t a car company. It’s an ecoscam rent-seeking company using the Global Warming myth to profit from government regulation and confiscation. Like a lot of eco businesses, it exists to profit from Global Warming regulations, rather than to sell a product on its own merits.

Tesla admits their batteries could “fry your family”!

Tesla has rushed out an extended battery warranty due to exposes such as:

Which show that Tesla Batteries are an extreme danger because of the way they are configured, used and deployed. Tesla even tests them in a “blast chamber”, because they are so scared of them. Their own patent filings say they can kill you.

Now Tesla acknowledges the danger with a quickly authored battery warranty which does not actually cover burning your family or your house up.

Elon Musk shamed by Audi Commercial

After pushing everyone to think that the character in the Iron Man movies was based on him, Musk, the take-over founder of Tesla, was shamed this week to see that the new TV commercials promote Iron Man driving Tesla’s arch competitor: Audi!!!! Besides getting his whole house and career destroyed in the new Iron Man movie, this has to be rather a fine turn of events.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Federal prosecutors have launched a criminal investigation into the misuse, by corporate directors of a government sanctioned trading plan. The U.S. attorney is opened a broad reaching investigation in to stock false-hoods against Tesla. Stay tuned…

How Fisker and Tesla backers killed the new American auto industry on purpose.

How Fisker and Tesla backers killed the new American auto industry on purpose.

Caller reporters are now saying:
“Nobody starts car companies. It just isn’t done. Detroit has a perfect track record of killing off any company that tries it. But this time Detroit let the backers of Fisker and Tesla do the killing off.

Now that Tesla and Fisker backers and founders are caught, their hired blogger shills have been told to say that the “Oceans-11” DOE insiders “tightened up” after Tesla and Fisker but that proves that DOE staff knew that Tesla and Fisker were no-good, scammed-up applicants from the beginning and that “tightening up” means cutting off all competing small company applicants per orders from Tesla and Fisker backers.

The “tightening up” has now been proven to NOT have taken place AFTER Tesla and Fisker but CONNCURRENT with Solyndra, Tesla and Fisker. Evidence has proven that Tesla and Fisker got red-carpet treatment while, at the SAME EXACT TIME, all independent company applicants got massively different paperwork, intentionally delayed responses, changed review results, faked review results, no staff meetings, no help, no support, and none of the special treatment that Fisker and Tesla got.

When the LG and ATVM programs were put in place, a significant group of new car companies were able to get funded for the first time in history since Detroit was inaugurated. When Detroit realized this, they wanted the ATVM and LG programs shut down. They only needed to incentivize Tesla and Fisker backers to do the job for them.

Companies with proven, job-creating, problem-solving car engineering launched or expanded based on Washington assertions that they had a fair chance of receiving that funding. Alas, Tesla and Fisker’s backers rigged the program to let themselves in and then slam the door on all other applicants to stop competitors they likely would not be able to compete with in a fair fight. There was no “tightening up” because every applicant has now reported that they were intentionally jog-jammed, intimidated, ignored and gauntlet-run in a manner designed not to “tighten” but to “terminate”.

Stock Market Says Tesla Is Hanging By A Thread

Tesla: The Good, The Realistic And The Ugly Outlook
by Odysseus | about: TSLA

Why is Tesla (TSLA) currently trading at an average volume of 2.5 million shares and above $50 per share when they have yet to post a single positive quarter? Their goal is to capture 1% of the luxury market share in 2013 and 2% in 2014 (according to their investor presentation). Some may deem these 40-50% growth goals very hard to reach due to a limited market worldwide for luxury cars and the amount of established competition. There is also growing competition from new international car companies competing in all market segments, with a work force that is paid much less than the domestic employee and the ability to adapt (some may say copy) existing technology.

What the Tesla Bulls are Betting On

In 2013 Tesla is targeting to ship 20,000 units, at a very high 10-15% operating margin rate. This is a very hard margin rate to achieve these margins in the automotive industry, especially when the major companies are operating at these margin rates:

Lets assume they somehow hit their high-end target of 15% margin and also assume the high-end average of $100k sale price per car. Doing the simple math the profit would be roughly $15k per car, and multiplied by 20k units, that is $300 million in profit. Now lets assume a loss of 2.5% due to taxes and expenses before getting to the net profit (industry margin rates). That leaves a profit of $292.5 million and dividing it by the estimate of outstanding shares at the end of 2013 (at current outstanding share growth, assume 125 million shares), thus roughly $2.34 earnings per share. So at this growth rate and future advertised growth rate of 40 to 50%, the market will probably peg the stock at a P/E of 40-50, putting the share price at $93.6 to $117. Then in 2014 if they reach their shipping goal of 30k units, the growth rate will decrease to 30% and market will drop their P/E to 30-40 which will put the price at about $90-120 per share.

The Realistic Outlook

Based upon the competition in the automotive industry, emerging alternative fuels, hybrids vehicles and limited luxury market, the realistic outlook should be a 20-30% growth rate on the high end of estimates. If in fact the growth rate falls into the 20% range the market will most likely start trading the stock not as a startup, but as an established company with an industry perform or industry outperform growth rate. Currently established companies with growth rates at the top of their industries are trading anywhere from a price per earnings of 15 to 25. So lets look at the “units shipped forecast” under a realistic outlook:

2013 ~ 16-20k
2014 ~ 22.4-28k (40% growth)
2015 ~ 30k (20% growth)

So taking the realistic 2015 outlook and saying they remain somewhere in the high teens for margin (assume 17.5%) that leaves a $525 million profit and a approximate net profit of about $512 million in this scenario. Taking their outstanding share growth the projection at the end of 2015 should be about 145 million shares, leaving an earnings per share of $3.53. If the market awards Tesla with a high end price per earnings of 20, that will put the stock $70.6 per share. If the competition becomes too great or the margins slip, it will probably go down to trading between a P/E of 10 to 15, putting the stock at a $35.3 to $52.95 per share range.

My Ugly Prediction

The following prediction is based upon a lot of assumptions, uncertainties and questions that I hope you can answer in the comments field.

The Lithium Ion Battery Evaluation

Industry experts have said that lithium batteries have not advanced at a fast enough pace to warrant them the battery of choice for the future. According to Fred Schlacter, a lithium-ion battery expert and retired physicist from the U.S.-funded Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “Significant improvement in battery capacity can only be made by changing to a different chemistry.” (Washington Post Article ). So although Tesla is betting on this technology, there are a lot of industry experts that are not convinced that this technology can be expanded and a switch to a new chemistry might be made in the future. But can Tesla switch to a new technology in a short period of time and have enough cash to stay afloat while doing so? If a new technology comes out tomorrow you can bet companies like GM or Ford can put it into production a lot faster and more cost effective than a small start up can.

In fact, the industry is already developing competing technologies. Companies are close to bringing Hydrogen technology to market (USA Today Article) as well as expanding the use of natural gas. For example, Clean Energy (CLNE) is establishing a large network of natural gas fueling stations to first support the trucking industry and in the future may try to bring these stations to the domestic car market (CLNE expanding with partners like UPS). So how certain is Tesla that its rush of orders are not mainly for enthusiasts who want to own the next new adult toy? Once a new technology comes out and offers a greater range from an alternative energy choice, will Tesla be able to keep the luxury market interested in its older lithium ion technology?

There has also been a lot of safety incidents with the lithium ion batteries from overheating in cars and airplanes. After the regulators grounded the Boeing 787 Dreamliner due to overheating Lithium Batteries, Mr. Schlacter added, “Smart people have been working on this for 10 years already and no one is close to a new kind of battery,” (Reuters Article). To some experts this type of energy source seems to be at a dead end for growing capacities. A couple questions that should be on an investor’s mind is will this technology continue to have safety issues and how long will it be a viable source of energy?

In this Science Daily article, the life of a lithium ion battery is currently 5-20 years and declines in weather that is above 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Elon Musk (Tesla’s tweeting CEO) did announce a great battery warranty, but how long will that warranty last if most of these cars are driven in the high heat southern states and degrade in a short period of time?

The current cost of the batteries is also being subsidised by the government as alternative energy plants are being promoted. As the subsidies go down the cost may sky rocket, even though Mr. Musk says their margin rates (which he does not break down in their latest annual report) have little to do with government subsidies directly. However, the indirect subsidies to lithium manufacturing plants might disappear and who knows how hard that will hit Tesla’s margin rates.

In 2009, the federal stimulus package dumped $2 billion in battery plants but the results have been mixed. One company, A123 Systems, went bankrupt. It’s still making batteries but now it’s owned by a Chinese company. LG Chem, a South Korean company, got millions to build a battery plant in Holland, Michigan, but so far it’s sitting idle and hasn’t made any batteries. (NPR Article)

Taking these facts into account the outlook for the lithium battery car market is volatile. The government will most likely not continue to “dump” money into plants who sit idle and without the government’s support it will be harder for Tesla to keep driving costs down on their batteries and improving their margin rate. This is also a cause for concern in the future as the real money is in the ability of Tesla to keep trimming costs and bring the prices down to the everyday consumer. But this will be next to impossible if they cannot keep driving down the cost of the lithium ion batteries.

We also have to take into account supply and demand. If pure electric cars like the Nissan Leaf and hybrids like the Prius (52 mpg at a base price of under 25k) become more popular the demand for lithium ion by all of the major manufacturers will go up and Tesla will most likely not be able to get more favorable pricing. Their volumes in the next several years will still put them at the bottom of the pecking order against the big car companies.

Lastly, the Tesla bulls seem to be forgetting to look at the domestic and global recovery. The government subsidies tend to go away once the economy strengthens and the market uses more goods when the economy improves. As seen by the Dow Jones and S&P Charts over the past several quarters, a lot of investors are betting that the economy is growing stronger and that the global economy is also turning around. As companies feel safer to spend their stock piles of cash, the run on lithium ion based products throughout the many different industries that use it can increase the battery pricing enough to significantly hurt Tesla’s margins.

Furthermore, many volume based agreements in the automotive industry are tied to price indices of all sorts including labor, metal and raw goods indices. When the global market picks up and demand for labor and raw goods increases the suppliers will use their indices tied contracts to raise prices for their goods. Tesla will not have much room to push back as they are a very small player that is in the back of the line when it comes to favorable pricing, which is always given to the bigger consumer of goods, i.e. the GMs and Ford’s of the world.

The Market for Tesla

So what is the current (luxury) market size that Tesla is competing for? A recent Wall Street Journal article has this estimate in it:

(click to enlarge)

What can we infer from this chart? Domestic market in 2002 was 1,670k units in 2012 its 1,700k units, a growth of only 2% over 10 years. In large part this was due to the recession, but what is to say another recession is not around the corner? The estimate for the next 8 years is 5% per year, with most of the growth coming from China. But this growth is very uncertain and this Warc.com article points out this uncertainty. Both of the afore mentioned articles state that the Chinese market is volatile due to their government and other factors. If we take China out of the equation and look at the next four top global luxury car consumers, the growth rate is projected to be 909k units or approximately at a snail pace of 3% per year.

Although Tesla is experiencing a high growth rate since they started from a 0% market share and every new sale is taking a piece of the pie, the pie is a slow growing pie compared to other industries. So the initial wave of orders is exciting because the numbers represent a very deliciously growing piece of pie, but the growth will no doubt plateau. It will no doubt plateau because it seems as if the glutinous luxury market tend to try a new flavor and then go back to the traditional luxury brands that put out a new model every year. This statement can be validated by the fact that only a handful of luxury brands remain in the world.

There is also another market share concern that has yet to be mentioned and should be analyzed in a full Tesla analysis. This concern is how long will it be before the Chinese and the other dozens of Asian car companies copy this technology? Can Tesla compete with the additional taxes to export as well as the shipping costs in those markets? Or will they put out more shares and raise capital to try to build overseas factories?

It seems as if Tesla is the Guinea pig for the major manufacturers and if they show a profit quarter over quarter, how long before the major luxury makers with their versatile factories take the ion battery and adapt it to their luxury models? The Nissan Leaf has a long range and if Tesla has any success will Nissan and other manufacturers hesitate to put a bigger battery on a larger frame and put luxury features in the car? Tesla’s price is highly dependent on high margins, which can erode due to the uncertain lithium ion market and a high base selling price which can also erode as competition comes from every manufacturer.

Another criteria to look at when paying for a premium item is its payback period versus an item with the same functionality at a lower price. Tesla’s payback period is growing every quarter as hybrids are toping 50 mpg (at $4 a gallon it would take about 100 years to payback Tesla’s $50k premium versus a 40 mpg Lexus ES Hybrid) and thus it does not make sense for most families to get a Tesla if they do the math. This in turn limits the market again to individuals with a lot of cash to spend.

In conclusion to this lengthy diatribe, there are just too many obstacles and unknowns to pay $54 a share for a company that has not posted a positive quarter yet. I will only admit my assumptions are incorrect after three to four quarters of over 30% growth at high margin rates. I believe that it is a $30 to $40 stock and can grow further if they somehow can advance the technology and reduce the battery costs significantly to offer the everyday consumers a more affordable option. But right now I would be more inclined to bet on the Chicago Cubs winning the World Series than on Tesla sustaining its high growth rate.

Disclosure: I am short TSLA. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article. All views are my own speculations and are not meant to influence the stock price.

Free “loans” from taxpayer money acquired by submitting manipulated applications.
Competitors artificially blocked using taxpayer resources.
Tax credits from taxpayers to artificially reduce the price of your goods when your competitors do not get it.
Tax credits from taxpayers to build your factory cheaper when your competitors do not get it
Tax credits from each taxpayer for each car sold to be paid back to you for being green when your competitors do not get it.
Inflated stock scores on the taxpayer supported public stock exchange created by inflating results using tax credits and investors-acting-as-buyers.
Tax loss postings in annual tax filings for investors of the company who gain profits by reporting losses.
Personal manipulation of the process in disfavor to the taxpayer and in unjust reward to the manipulating entity.

??

You get a liability situation in which any taxpayer can sue for just cause, any company can sue for just cause, any state can sue for just cause or any citizens group can sue for just cause.. and win.

TESLA PR Manipulation BS!– Some of the more outstanding lies…

– Musk misrepresents status of Tesla in DOE application.

– Tesla says “Germany passed Tesla as safe” after NO credible safety study conducted by Germany, while trying to hide fact that U.S. Investigators published huge demand letter for safety data, online in U.S.A. and actual investigation is only getting started.

– Tesla avoiding any public comment on massive number of fraud lawsuits underway.

1. How many “owners” of Tesla are it’s own investors and associates in order to artificially increase volume numbers.

2. How many reservations have been cancelled.

3. Why Tesla forecasts a loss in the immediate future.

4. Why Tesla SEC reporting shows that orders will DECREASE.

5. How many repair requests have been submitted.

6. How they calculated indexed tax credits by using unused credits.

7. What % of calculated revenue was based on one-time tax credits from a deal that was made with a compensated government official in Sacramento?

=====================================

CHALLENGE: TO ALL REPORTERS AND MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC WITH A STREAMING SMARTPHONE:

Catch Elon Musk on camera and make him answer the above questions. Find the next call-in show he is going to be live on, or the next convention or other PR gig he has his PR company promote him on and put these questions to him point-blank on camera. The first reporter, or private individual, to pull this off gets 10 T-shirts.

The smoke is in the wind…

How Tesla Buys a Consumer Reports Positive Rating

When a group spends millions of dollars a month buying influence, buying silence, buying “reporters”, bloggers and IR shills, it is very easy to get the 5 individuals that write Consumer Reports material to steer that material says Tony K. of The NYT. You will do anything to get good reviews when your company is under federal investigation he says.

By Driving a Tesla you are supporting, and involved in, ORGANIZED CRIME.

By Driving a Tesla you are supporting, and involved in, organized crime.
By Stanly W., Former Tesla Employee, Fremont California

As the weekly revelations emerge on the rigging of the DOE funding by the backers of a few insider car companies, any Tesla owner needs to make a decision. As the owner of a Tesla, you must now be aware of the nearly ten thousand news stories over the last 5 years documenting the cronyism, insiders, organized crime manipulations to acquire the tax dollars of the American public and artificially control the market via bribery and influence trading.

There is nothing novel or new about the electric car, it has been around since the 1800’s and Detroit Electric, GM and many companies have been selling far more novel electric cars for nearly a century. The only point you are making by driving a Tesla is that you are either rich and too stupid to read the news or you are corrupt and part of the crime. (Many Tesla investors were told to buy Tesla’s to create a fake volume of orders).

It has taken Tesla ten years to sell a few thousand electric cars, ZAP Motors in Santa Rose has sold many, many times more electric cars in a vastly shorter time with vastly, vastly less money in investments. Tesla, and Tesla owners, should be ashamed of how few cars have been sold, after so many years, and so much money of trying, “YOUR” taxpayer money given to a billionaire, who did not need it, in order to trick the stock market into thinking there was something there.

A number of consumer groups have national and international campaigns underway to inform every Tesla owner in the world about what Tesla really is. Tesla spends millions of dollars a month buying reporters, bloggers and news stories. Elon Musk spends over $320,000.00 a cycle buying PR services, GQ articles, 60 Minutes glory stories, etc. about himself, personally. Do you want to be told what to think by a PR machine or can you think for yourself? Can you look at the vast set of facts on this site, and hundreds of other of sites, and see the plain truth?

You saw the FBI kick in the doors at Solyndra on national TV, down the street from Tesla. You know that much, much more is going to come out. What has already come out is obvious to the prudent observer.

Federal investigators have been stonewalled, or ordered to put their investigations into slow-motion, in order to avoid embarrassing certain people. This is no longer tolerable. Buying justice or buying a lack-of-justice is really not how America was set-up.

You can buy many lower cost, more dependable, less likely-to-catch-on-fire electric cars than the Tesla, today, right now. You can buy cars from Ford, KIA and many other big companies that look just like a Tesla for $100K less. The only reason to buy a Tesla, now, is to tell the world that you are rich and crooked or rich and really, really ignorant of the news.

Electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla’s stock has rocketed up after the company reported positive earnings and operating cash flow for the first quarter. The stock had been heavily shorted, and short covering evidently fuelled the stock’s take-off.

Color me sceptical. The company was heavily shorted for good reason, and is even more ripe for shorting after the run-up. (Personal opinion. Not investment advice. You’re on your own about that.)

For one thing, although operating results did improve from the (really terrible 3/4Q12), the much hyped earnings number was put into positive territory by two items: a write-down of a warrant that Tesla granted the U.S. Department of Energy as part of a $465 million DOE loan to the company, and FX gains (mainly on yen). Not repeatable. And the first seems highly dodgy to me — a squishy number based on an assumption that Tesla will be able to pay off

I’m also sceptical because of the near miraculous nature of the turnaround. Mere months ago, the company was in dire straits:

It’s a lucky thing for Tesla Motors shareholders that the U.S. Department of Energy loves the companys loan applications.

Without the hundreds of millions of dollars Tesla has received from the federal government this year, the electric-car makers financials would be gasping for air as 2012 winds down.

Given the ugly state of Tesla’s finances — and the company’s sky-high valuation: almost $4 billion — it will rank among the top candidates in Silicon Valley for a 2013 stock collapse, unless it receives significantly more cash next year.

I get a whiff of a company that needed a miracle to stave off disaster. Maybe it got one, but I am always sceptical of miracles whenever accounting is involved. And that’s certainly the case here. The shorts have been bloodied, but they’ll be back. Indeed, this seems like a typical battle in a war between a dodgy company and short sellers.

But I am most sceptical because of Tesla’s not-really-founder-but-biggest-investor, Elon Musk. Mr. Musk is Occupy’s favourite crony capitalist. And Occupy is one of Mr. Musk’s favourite movements. Yes, once upon a time Musk started a real business, Paypal (NASDAQ:EBAY), that proved very successful without any government help. That was then, this is now.

Musk has three ventures: Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY). All are heavily dependent on government largesse.

Take Tesla for starters. It received the $465 mm loan from DOE, but it also benefits from a $7500/car federal subsidy for electric cars. Moreover, it benefits from the State of California’s Zero Emissions Credit program. In its infinite wisdom, CA mandated that all the major auto companies sell a certain number of zero emissions vehicles. If they don’t they have to buy credits from companies that do make them — namely Tesla. This was also essential in putting the company in the black in Q1, and the company is sitting on $250 mm worth of these credits.

IOW, Tesla’s profits are courtesy of you, the taxpayer — and also courtesy of the shareholders of Ford (NYSE:F), GM (NYSE:GM), Toyota (NYSE:TM), Honda (NYSE:HMC), etc.

Next consider SpaceX. This venture provides evidence of Musk’s love for Occupy: he has promised that this private space venture will go to Mars, and wears an Occupy Mars shirt to make the point.

It is also touted as a privately capitalised space venture, which it is, I guess, but it is also almost completely dependent on government contracts. The private money is attracted by the scent of public money. Sorry, but a company that is dependent on NASA’s IV for support is not truly a private company: the company is basically a cutout between the investors and the taxpayers.

The company has not exactly covered itself in glory. It had serious trouble with its initial launches, including an embarrassing episode in which the ashes of Star Trek‘s Scotty, James Doohan, were on a SpaceX craft that didn’t make it into space: it crashed instead somewhere in the South Pacific. Which I guess would have been great if James Doohan had starred in South Pacific. Don’t worry, though. As a precaution, some of Mr. Doohan’s ashes were retained, and that part of the beloved actor’s remains did make it into space as he desired.

And speaking of Broadway and movie classics, Musk is auditioning for a role in a summer stock Music Man with his boosterism of SpaceX:

You don’t have to be a believer in conspiracy theories to wonder why senior government officials are so committed to going the commercial route in space. Even a cursory review of SpaceX programs and plans reveals reasons for doubt. The questions begin with a business strategy that isn’t just disruptive, but downright incredible. Mr. Musk says that he can offer launch prices far below those quoted by any traditional provider — including the Chinese — by running a lean, vertically integrated enterprise with minimal government oversight that achieves sizable economies of scale. The economies of scale are possible, he contends, because there is huge pent-up demand for space travel in the marketplace that cannot be met within the prevailing pricing structure. By dropping prices substantially, this latent demand can then be unlocked, greatly increasing the rate of rocket production and launches. When combined with other features of the SpaceX business model, the increased pace of production and launches results in revolutionary price reductions.

There isn’t much serious research to demonstrate that the pent-up demand Musk postulates really exists, nor that the price reductions he foresees are feasible. He has suggested in some interviews that launch costs could decline to a small fraction of current levels if all the assumptions in his business plan come true, and he has posted a commentary on his web-site explaining how SpaceX is already able to offer the lowest prices in the business. It’s hard to look inside the operations of a private company, but SpaceX does seem to be doing all the things necessary to minimize costs such as using proven technology, building as many items as possible in-house, and hiring a young workforce willing to work long hours. And to his credit, Musk has committed over $100 million of his own money to the venture. However, his rockets have major performance limitations compared with other launch vehicles in the market, and they are not yet rated as safe for carrying people. Becoming “man-rated” will necessarily increase the role of federal officials in monitoring SpaceX operations, which is not good news for a business model grounded in minimal government oversight (traditional launch providers say government regulations and overhead charges are a key driver in their own pricing policies).

Downright incredible sounds about right. It sounds like a con to me. Especially the whole “economy of scale” thing. That’s the kind of thing defence contractors say to get the government to buy more units of a plane or ship. It’s not good economics.

And Musk’s winning personality was on display when questioned about SpaceX’s launch failures:

Mr. Musk recently responded to a question from Space News reporter Amy Svitak about the two-year delay in accomplishing that second Falcon 9 launch by observing, “In the space business that’s on time.” Perhaps he was irritated by the reporters implied criticism, but it goes without saying that if astronauts on board the space station are awaiting supplies, a prolonged launch delay could spell big trouble.

What a guy. Takes your money, and then gets peevish when you accuse him he’s blowing it.

Then there is SolarCity, an installer of solar panels. The solar industry has raked in $4.1 billion of stimulus money, and the government thinks that SolarCity in particular has played fast and loose with the numbers to get more than it should:

Last July, federal investigators subpoenaed SolarCity, the largest installer of residential solar panels, as part of a probe into whether solar-power companies received excessive government grants.

. . . .

Even before the Treasury Department’s inquiry into grant applications filed by SolarCity and other installers, House Republicans had questioned the program’s effectiveness in creating jobs. Congress declined to renew the grant program at the end of 2011, and only projects that were being planned by that date can receive grants today.

The government is looking into whether SolarCity and other firms misrepresented the fair-market value of solar systems in order to boost the value of the grants they received. In its suit, SolarCity says two of the company’s subsidiaries received smaller-than-expected grants. The company doesn’t say exactly how much funding it applied for originally, but it says the final grants issued by the Treasury Department were $8 million less than was proper under the law.

But SolarCity is doubling down on the chutzpah, and suing the government, claiming the government has paid it too little!:

Now, SolarCity is pushing back with a lawsuit that alleges the opposite: some of the taxpayer-funded grants it received weren’t as big as originally promised.

The suit, filed quietly in February in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, comes as SolarCity and other industry players are defending solar-friendly government policies, and it could undermine the industry’s message that solar power will soon be viable without government help.

Solar businesses have cratered around the world: China, Spain, Germany. The industry is addicted to government support.

Elon Musk has a plan to get rich. It involves you. The taxpayer. You pay taxes. The government gives huge dollops of that money to Elon. Elon gets rich. Who could possibly object? Who could deny Elon’s genius?

He certainly thinks he’s a genius. He has no hesitations in telling people so.

And there is a kind of perverse genius here. In the Age of Obama he has found the key to riches. Get in good with the government-by, you know, sponsoring an inaugural ball. And then let the government give you the goodies. Then sue the government if they don’t give you enough goodies.

And then preen before the world, touting your genius-and your environmental credentials. (Pay no attention to that private jet behind the curtain!) (Musk quit the Zuckerberg-created immigration lobbying effort FWD.us because it bought ads supporting politicians who support immigration changes but also had the temerity to support the Keystone pipeline.)

What a repulsive man.

Repulsive, yes, but sadly, Elon Musk is a Man For Our Age, in more ways than one.

Tesla Breaks Automotive History Record for Wasted Money, It’s Official

Never in automotive history, in the recorded history of the world, has a car company spent so much money over such a long period of time to only sell so few cars!

Only Tesla rich Frat boy Stanford yuppie school-chums and Tesla’s own investors are buying the cars and that stream has now run dry.

The few thousand cars Tesla has sold to it’s insiders is so nothing, so small, so insignificant that Honda and GM executives refer to a low meeting turn-out as “pulling a Tesla”.

Tesla still has a few hundred million dollars left to keep buying it’s own cars from itself on behalf of its investors in order to fake-up sales but the trick is becoming transparent.

Elon Musk spends all of his money on hype and PR to cover the dirty reality. Pull back the shiny façade and you find a nasty set of truths.

This is a car company that has admitted that it was over $100,000.00 OFF on the calculation of the BOM of their car!!!!

The warrants that Tesla’s insider friends inside DOE gave Tesla instead of cutting them off like Fisker, like they should have done, is a crime.

People are ashamed to drive a Tesla so only as many Tesla’s have been sold in TEN YEARS as Toyota sells in A WEEK!

– Roger B.- NYC

Adding up the Lies in Tesla’s DOE application:

Adding up the Lies in Tesla’s DOE application:

– Tesla said they were going to BUILD a Factory in San Jose. They had no intention of building a factory and just wanted to trick state and city officials into signing their appeal letters. The factory was never built. Tesla investors sought to get real estate profits from the land deal.

– Tesla said they were going to BUILD a Factory in New Mexico. They are being sued in New Mexico for this lie. They had no intention of building a factory and just wanted to trick state and city officials into signing their appeal letters. The factory was never built. Tesla investors sought to get real estate profits from the land deal.

– Tesla said they were going to BUILD a Factory in Downey, CA. They had no intention of building a factory and just wanted to trick state and city officials into signing their appeal letters. The factory was never built. Tesla investors sought to get real estate profits from the land deal.

– Tesla fired multiple workers without notice. They have been sued by those workers and lost those lawsuits. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla had no factory but DOE rejected other applicants for not having a factory. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla was $100,000.00 off on their BOM calculations per car. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Deloitte was both the accountant for Tesla and the accounting reviewer for DOE. With Tesla’s at-application-time credit and numbers actually so bad, one has to wonder what was up. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla and DOE staff were supplied by McKinsey. Mckinsey wrote all of the green energy plans and white papers for David Axelrod to give to the White House. Mckinsey staff have now gone to jail. Tesla and Fisker investors are best friends with McKinsey senior executives. One Mckinsey executive, associated with a jailed McKinsey senior executive, is now dead from “natural causes”. The heads of the DOE loan Program: Matt Rogers and Steve Spinner, were working for McKinsey while also working at the DOE loan program as “deciders” for Steven Chu. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla made a deal with DOE staff to spiff the loan announcement in order to hype the stock market in order to fake up stock sales. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– DOE had IBM consulting, in Virginia, do Tesla’s “due diligence”. IBM consulting was a contractor to Tesla. IBM Consulting supplied the DOE loan staff that McKinsey did not supply. IBM consulting only gave Tesla their top score. The reviews by IBM consulting, which operating under a variety of names from a fake office, now seem to have been manipulated in favor of Tesla. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla investors emailed and phone called the White House and Senior DOE staff to make quid-pro-quo deals which are now documented. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla got their inside Senator to give them only-for-Tesla factory tax reductions, green tax credits and other special finance perks that allowed Tesla to book profit that did not actually exist. When this got other applicants in trouble, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– At the time of application, Tesla had no prototype of the car that was to be factory produced (The roadster was not at all the car produced), no design CAD, no factory production files and no engineering for factory machine automation. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla was caught sending out letters to customers telling them to close deposits so they could fake orders before the earnings call. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla engaged in a conflict-of-interest with a Senator and her real-estate family for Tesla and Solyndra land, and adjacent land, in Fremont, Ca. How did Tesla get this through? Corruption?

– Tesla had one of the worst credit ratings at the time of application. Even today, to pay back all of Tesla’s investors is nearly impossible. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla had one of the worst debt ratios at the time of application. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– The cost, BOM, time-to-market, range and domestic jobs metrics was lower in Tesla’s application than most other applicants. When better ratings got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– DOE staff made a deal with Tesla to swap Detroit stock to cook up the books for the application. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla made a deal to hire union workers for the NUMMI plant then fired most of them and hired H1B foreign workers with taxpayer money. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla provided no collateral for their loan application and had no assets of value. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla has sent out PR saying they are repaying their loan many years in the future in order to stop investigations. They have NOT paid off their loan and the facts of sales show no possibility that they will.

– Tesla buys the majority of its parts from non-American suppliers. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla hired multiple “famous auto people” who then quit when they say what Tesla was up to. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla said they were going to build and sell over 500,000 cars as of today’s date. They have missed every milestone and sold less than 5000 cars. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla could not make their payments and got their deal custom-changed multiple times. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

More coming, outside investigators and crowd-review people, send in yours…

The researched chart by Muckety reveals the secret connections to the control, and manipulation, of consumer perceptions, federal public policy and law-making. If proven, this subjects both Tesla and Google to SEC fraud charges.

Google has been shown to have a senior silent control ownership in Tesla. Tests by IT and SEO engineers show that Tesla receives an inordinate position in all Google News stories and general searches, while negative stories about Tesla are diminished. This ONLY takes places on the Google search engine and Google News.

In the average search or comparative news cycle on any other search engine, Tesla does not show up or is 90% less visible in searches. Other companies and politicians have charged that Google artificially steers its search settings in favor of personal friends and in disfavor of its enemies. This demonstrates that Google is untrustworthy.

Google owners are personal advisors to the White House. Google Owners sit on White House advice groups.
Google is pumping the Tesla stock offering by making it look like there is a stock demand for Google stock and by using the Google IR analysts and I-banks it has control over to inflate the stock value along with making the newsfeeds that Google covers about Tesla look 300% better than the actual circumstances. This is a conflict of interest as Google and it’s VC’s are investors in Tesla. This should be against the law.

========================================

From Parker Summers, San Diego Calif.

Google is not thought very highly of by those who pay attention, this posting is all over the internet:

“GOOGLE is ACTUALLY DOING MUCH EVIL! They are simply a spy service. Every location you search on google earth is logged and tracked and sold to government agencies and ad agencies. Every word or sentence you type into google is logged and tracked and sold to government agencies and ad agencies. Every page you click on in google is logged and tracked and sold to government agencies and ad agencies.A data file about everything you do on the internet using any google technology is logged and tracked and sold to government agencies and ad agencies.

Google makes most of its money by spying on people.Why would you use something that makes you cooperate in spying on yourself? Everything you watch on googles youtube is logged and tracked and sold to government agencies and ad agencies.

Google reads all of your email. Google sends any interesting emails with words it doesn’t like to agencies and the rest are put in an advertising database to trick you into thinking you stumbled upon certain ads when, in fact Google is secretly pushing those ads on you.

Google GLASS is the ultimate spy-on-you-tool, it has face recognition, fashion recognition and pretty much spies on everybody and everything around you, and you, and then Google sends that data off to the Government. Never get near anybody wearing a Google Glass. Ask to have them out-lawed. Google Maps camera cars take picturs & capture wifu data for everyone in the US.

Google saves a file of everything you have ever done, looked at, sent or moused over IN YOUR ENTIRE HISTORY OF USING THE INTERNET. It isn’t a business right anymore, it is an abuse of the public trust.

Google has thousands of people that work for them to create technologies to control the internet in order to make people give more information to google about themselves and that personal information is logged and tracked and sold to government agencies and ad agencies. Do you like being used as a tool? Do you like Google infesting your life for profit and special interest control of what you do? Twitter & Facebook are just as sinister and evil. Dump all 3 of them.

Use http://www.duckduckgo.com or any other non tracking search engine. Find a non tracking replacement for every service google offers. Google is very evil! You will NEVER be able to trust Google.

It is very clear from the filings that Google is a huge investor group and the mouthpiece for Tesla, why is this not made more public?

=======================================

Tom’s theory..More evidence emerging…

My Theory- By Tom Jordan, Senior Executive:

“Just theoretically, let’s suppose that White House staffers Steve Rattner, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanual went to Silicon Valley Vc’s: Tom Steyer, Tim Draper, Elon Musk, Ray Lane, Eric Schmidt and John Doerr and said: “Hey, if you fund Grassroots Action, Inc., MoveOn and some other national voter-turnout groups, and make sure those voters turn out for our side, we will put you on our economic boards, give your companies breaks and incentives, push laws that help your products and give you free loans to make cars and batteries that you will have majority stock profit from”. Wouldn’t that be a very interesting way to hide the quid-pro-quo?

What if there were recordings of one of those meetings?”

==========================================================

Interesting: Steve Rattner, Robert Gibbs, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanual all quit their jobs at the White House, at about the same time, in a recession, when you already had the highest job in the nation, why would they do that unless Federal investigators had questioned them and they knew the truth was going to eventually come out!?

Paul Dell
Washington- DC

BUSTED!!! Opposition News Hype-mongers Reveal Themselves.

In the run-up to the big DC investigations of: who-did-what-to-whom you will suddenly find a bunch of articles posted in seemingly unrelated publications. These articles all share the same message.

The problem (For the Tesla and DOE VC shills) is that, unfortunately for them, the internet is an amazing archival library. A quick search shows that at no time was there ever such a cascade of articles about this one topic.

The mad rush to validate points the finger at which writers are shills for Tesla and the bad people at DOE.

All with the same message, trying to pre-sell the plastic-coated message that only Tesla is still around today because only Tesla was good. In fact only Tesla bribed enough people to get the free taxpayer money in order to trick the stock market and that is a felony and Tesla staff and backers need to go to prison.

Carlson Kesmeir
Los Angeles

WE WON!! Tesla rushes to pay back U.S. Loan to Try to Halt Investigations caused by this paper and others!

WE WON!! Tesla rushes to pay back U.S. Loan this week to Try to Halt Investigations caused by this paper and others!

Tesla Tweeted today that it is paying back all of the loan money it embezzled from the taxpayers in an attempt to halt the investigations which now threaten its backers with potential prison terms.

Alas, the investigations are only just getting ramped-up it seems…….

Jim Danwforth- Fremont, CA

Did Tesla really pay back their loan? NOT ACTUALLY.. Taxpayers are STILL paying for it

By Paul Czonga
Investors Bluesheet

Did Tesla really pay back their loan? Not actually!

Through a series of tricky Wall Street/Crooked Bank paper shuffling, obscure, warrant-sliding, shady smooth talking dances Tesla is now claiming that it has “paid back the money” and “made America proud”.

This is a joke.

They used slipped milestones, readjusted values, cooked books, and insiders to “pay back” the loan that they got for free in the first place.

The caused billions of dollars of damage to the auto industry, overall domestic jobs, raped huge profits on skims and personal special fees and personal payments. That is money and cost that is still owed to America.

When the details from 2007 to today come out in the communications between all of the players. The truth will be very apparent.

Yesterday, Tesla paid off the balance of its U.S. government loan, using proceeds from its $1 billion-plus offering of stock and warrants last week, as CEO Elon Musk had said Monday it would in a tweet.

The amount settled yesterday was $451.8 million, following installments paid by Tesla last year and in the first quarter of this year.

Loans to Ford, Nissan, Tesla

The company had been granted $465 million in low-interest loans by the U.S. Department of Energy in June 2009, through its advanced technology vehicle manufacturing program.

Other carmakers who got loans included Fisker ($532 million, of which only $192 million was disbursed), Ford ($5.9 billion), and Nissan ($1.6 billion).

Musk thanked the DoE “and the members of Congress and their staffs that worked hard to create the ATVM program,” in a release yesterday, with special appreciation to “the American taxpayer from whom these funds originate.”

“I hope we did you proud,” he concluded.

Out from under

So Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] is now out from under the shadow of U.S. government investment.

By paying off the loan early, Tesla also precluded the government from sharing in the current appreciation of its stock. Warrants for the DoE to acquire Tesla stock would not have kicked in until later in the loan term, as at least one critic points out.

The DoE issued a grateful press release as well, saying Tesla’s repayment highlights the “strength” of its loan portfolio and noting that losses to its total $34 billion portfolio of loans across many programs represent only about 2 percent to date.

Like any other carmaker selling plug-in electric cars, it continues to benefit from Federal income-tax credits of $2,500 to $7,500 offered to its buyers.

And it also earns additional money selling Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) credits to other makers who buy them to comply with California state regulations requiring them to sell a certain number of vehicles that have no tailpipe emissions.

Only carmaker to repay?

But Tesla took it a step further, saying in its release, ” Following this payment, Tesla will be the only American car company to have fully repaid the government.”

That generated a swift response from Chrysler, which issued this statement late last night:

The information is unmistakably incorrect. It’s pretty well-known that almost exactly two years ago–May 24,2011–Chrysler Group LLC repaid (in full and with interest) U.S. and Canadian government loans more than six years ahead of schedule. Question: short memory or short-circuit?

Chrysler’s closing sentence contains a pun that one might expect from the Detroit maker most hostile to plug-in electric vehicles (despite the excellence of the Fiat 500e it built as a compliance car).

But is Chrysler’s claim accurate?

Yes and no.

There was that bailout…

The company did pay off $7.6 billion in loans that were part of the U.S. government’s overall bailout of the company, control of which was essentially passed to Italy’s Fiat.

But as numerous commentators pointed out at the time, the U.S. government still lost money on the Chrysler bailout.

When Chrysler filed for bankruptcy in 2009, Obama administration forgave more than $4 billion of debt from the $13 billion it had put into the company.

So while Chrysler did technically pay off the government loans owed by the post-bankruptcy Chrysler, the U.S. government still lost billions of dollars on its investment in Chrysler.

Tesla’s release includes a sentence noting that the DoE’s ATVM program “is often confused with the financial bailouts provided to the then bankrupt GM and Chrysler, who were ineligible for the ATVM program, because a requirement of that program was good financial health.”

______________________________________________

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(c) 2013, High Gear Media.

Tesla Owner Buyers List Out in the Public. No privacy for Tesla Owners!

If you bought a Tesla, you are now going to get marketed to and pleaded with by community service groups around the world. It seems that, in addition to each Tesla being rigged to spy on you everywhere you go and watch how you use the Tesla over the internet without you knowing about it, as Elon Musk admitted in his fight with the NY Times reporter, The Tesla marketing group has sold the Tesla buyers list to other marketing groups who then sold the list openly on the market. Now Tesla owners all over the world are getting emails like this:

“Do you know that driving this Tesla makes you part of a crime against America? People think you are part of the bad things when they see you drive it:

– Tesla said they were going to BUILD a Factory in San Jose. They had no intention of building a factory and just wanted to trick state and city officials into signing their appeal letters. The factory was never built. Tesla investors sought to get real estate profits from the land deal.

– Tesla said they were going to BUILD a Factory in New Mexico. They are being sued in New Mexico for this lie. They had no intention of building a factory and just wanted to trick state and city officials into signing their appeal letters. The factory was never built. Tesla investors sought to get real estate profits from the land deal.

– Tesla said they were going to BUILD a Factory in Downey, CA. They had no intention of building a factory and just wanted to trick state and city officials into signing their appeal letters. The factory was never built. Tesla investors sought to get real estate profits from the land deal.

– Tesla fired multiple workers without notice. They have been sued by those workers and lost those lawsuits. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla had no factory but DOE rejected other applicants for not having a factory. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla was $100,000.00 off on their BOM calculations per car. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Deloitte was both the accountant for Tesla and the accounting reviewer for DOE. With Tesla’s at-application-time credit and numbers actually so bad, one has to wonder what was up. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla and DOE staff were supplied by McKinsey. Mckinsey wrote all of the green energy plans and white papers for David Axelrod to give to the White House. Mckinsey staff have now gone to jail. Tesla and Fisker investors are best friends with McKinsey senior executives. One Mckinsey executive, associated with a jailed McKinsey senior executive, is now dead from “natural causes”. The heads of the DOE loan Program: Matt Rogers and Steve Spinner, were working for McKinsey while also working at the DOE loan program as “deciders” for Steven Chu. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla made a deal with DOE staff to spiff the loan announcement in order to hype the stock market in order to fake up stock sales. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– DOE had IBM consulting, in Virginia, do Tesla’s “due diligence”. IBM consulting was a contractor to Tesla. IBM Consulting supplied the DOE loan staff that McKinsey did not supply. IBM consulting only gave Tesla their top score. The reviews by IBM consulting, which operating under a variety of names from a fake office, now seem to have been manipulated in favor of Tesla. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla investors emailed and phone called the White House and Senior DOE staff to make quid-pro-quo deals which are now documented. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla got their inside Senator to give them only-for-Tesla factory tax reductions, green tax credits and other special finance perks that allowed Tesla to book profit that did not actually exist. When this got other applicants in trouble, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– At the time of application, Tesla had no prototype of the car that was to be factory produced (The roadster was not at all the car produced), no design CAD, no factory production files and no engineering for factory machine automation. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla was caught sending out letters to customers telling them to close deposits so they could fake orders before the earnings call. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla engaged in a conflict-of-interest with a Senator and her real-estate family for Tesla and Solyndra land, and adjacent land, in Fremont, Ca. How did Tesla get this through? Corruption?

– Tesla had one of the worst credit ratings at the time of application. Even today, to pay back all of Tesla’s investors is nearly impossible. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla had one of the worst debt ratios at the time of application. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– The cost, BOM, time-to-market, range and domestic jobs metrics was lower in Tesla’s application than most other applicants. When better ratings got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– DOE staff made a deal with Tesla to swap Detroit stock to cook up the books for the application. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla made a deal to hire union workers for the NUMMI plant then fired most of them and hired H1B foreign workers with taxpayer money. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla provided no collateral for their loan application and had no assets of value. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla has sent out PR saying they are repaying their loan many years in the future in order to stop investigations. They have NOT paid off their loan and the facts of sales show no possibility that they will.

– Tesla buys the majority of its parts from non-American suppliers. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla hired multiple “famous auto people” who then quit when they say what Tesla was up to. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla said they were going to build and sell over 500,000 cars as of today’s date. They have missed every milestone and sold less than 5000 cars. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

– Tesla could not make their payments and got their deal custom-changed multiple times. When this got other applicants declined, how did Tesla get through? Corruption?

—————–

Alison Wood

Even FORBES admits Tesla is a Scam!

By Patrick Michaels, FORBES MAGAZINE
I write about the interface of public science and public policy

If Tesla Would Stop Selling Cars, We’d All Save Some Money

First of all, let’s stipulate that the Tesla model S is a pretty cool looking car, that the high-end version accelerates like a rocket, and that its massive, low center of gravity pretty much inures it against a rollover. Next, let’s congratulate Elon Musk on paying off his half-billion dollar federal loan ahead of time. Finally, thanks to everyone in the country for helping to make this possible, and for continuing to do so.

The public is still on the hook for Tesla, and will be for the foreseeable future.

First, there’s the $7500 taxback bonus that every buyer gets and every taxpayer pays. Then there are generous state subsidies ($2500 in California, $4000 in Illinois—the bluer the state, the more the taxpayers get gouged), all paid to people forking out $63K (plus taxes) for the base version, to roughly $100K for the really quick one.

The latest round of Tesla wonderment came when it reported its first quarterly profit earlier this month. TSLA stock darned near doubled in a week. Musk then borrowed $150 million from Goldman Sachs (shocking!) and floated a cool billion in new stock and long-term debt. That’s how we—the taxpayers—were repaid.

But is TSLA another Google, or just another DoubleClick? DCLK zoomed from $2 to $200 without ever showing a profit, something Tesla has yet to do with its cars. It then famously crashed.

Tesla didn’t generate a profit by selling sexy cars, but rather by selling sleazy emissions “credits,” mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements. The competition, like Honda, doesn’t have a mass market plug-in to meet the mandate and therefore must buy the credits from Tesla, the only company that does. The bill for last quarter was $68 million. Absent this shakedown of potential car buyers, Tesla would have lost $57 million, or $11,400 per car. As the company sold 5,000 cars in the quarter, though, $13,600 per car was paid by other manufacturers, who are going to pass at least some of that cost on to buyers of their products. Folks in the new car market are likely paying a bit more than simply the direct tax subsidy.

How’s this going to work in the future? As long as the competition has to pay greenmail to Tesla, probably just fine. And with California gradually ratcheting up the electric-vehicle mandate, maybe just finer. No wonder the stock price doubled and Goldman shelled out.

There’s only one slight, teensy-weensie problem. While there were enough high-end customers to supply Tesla around $400 million in gross receipts last quarter (that would be 5,000 cars at an average of $80,000 a copy), they still lost money. How many customers are there for such a pricey car?

Tesla can’t increase demand by dropping the price very much. About the only way they can do this (barring some—currently remote—major battery technology improvements) is by cutting the vehicle’s range. Nissan’s Leaf provides a bit of instruction here. Selling for around $32K (out the door) it sold pitifully few—less than 10,000 last year.

As the May 22 Wall Street Journal showed, when a battery car’s range gets in the Leaf zone (real world: 70 miles; advertised: 83) you can’t even give it away. Couple the federal $7500 with $2500 in several states, and the costs of a two year lease, allowing for reduced fuel costs, more than pay for the car. That’s right, free transportation, and sales still suck.

Tesla can’t go much below the EPA estimated 205 mile range (make that about 170 in modestly cold winter weather) of its base version before it hits the same range-anxiety wall.

If Tesla’s sales drop—not by much—the company isn’t going to be able to cover its losses by selling green indulgences. First, the primary losses increase, and then they have fewer indulgences, which are generated by car sales.

So here we have a car pushing $100,000 paid for in no small part by you and me, no matter whether Tesla paid back their federal loan or not. The small comfort is that we are off the hook for any default on that loan, but it would be more comfort if we weren’t all compelled—completely against most of our wills—to shell out around somewhere around $10K (depending on state) for every one that goes out the door. The more they sell, the more we pay.

Oddly enough, the only way to stop this craziness if for the company to stop making cars. If demand drops much, or California goes into a major fiscal crisis (they’re working on it), oddly enough, Tesla’s bankruptcy will save the rest of us some money.

Goldman Sachs, the most corrupt investment bank in the world, floated the cash for this deal because they helped bribe and manipulate Congress to get the money and the special discounts in the first place

How The Better Place Bankruptcy Is Relevant To Tesla’s Achilles’ Heel: Lack Of Charging Infrastructure

BY SEEKING ALPHA

Tesla (TSLA) has been on a tear in terms of stock price. We believe that it is running mostly on ‘hopium’ recently. Tesla also passed by the market cap of Fiat (FIATY.PK). We strongly believe that the fundamental Achilles’ heel of Tesla is its lack of charging infrastructure. This Achilles’ heel is appearing in our view to be a white swan, something which investors do not necessarily pay much attention to, but which is obvious to many later. This Achilles’ heel can be seen by the recent bankruptcy of the very well funded company (Morgan Stanley, UBS, General Electric, HSBC, others) which focused on charging electric cars, called ‘Better Place’:

“This is a very sad day for all of us. We stand by the original vision as formulated by Shai Agassi of creating a green alternative that would lessen our dependence on highly polluting transportation technologies. Unfortunately, the path to realizing that vision was difficult, complex and littered with obstacles, not all of which we were able to overcome.”

If a company receiving investment of over $850 million for grand infrastructure projects can not make it, why is it possible for Tesla to make it when there is next to no charging infrastructure in the USA or any other country for that matter? Why did this company go bankrupt? Lots of reasons, but it essentially boils down to still a lack of a demand for electric vehicles due to high prices and lack of charging infrastructure, two problems Tesla is still stuck with. We learned this from our research into the recent bankruptcy of Better Place:

“Because the technology has still not matured. If there was currently on the market a compact and light battery at a reasonable price that could provide cars with a driving range of 400 kilometers, then the electric car would become a global hit. In practice, the presently available batteries for electric vehicles are enormous, weighing the same as two passengers, and require advanced cooling solutions to prevent them from exploding, consume a rare raw material (lithium) and exotic technologies with a limited lifespan costing the price of half a car.”

We believe fundamentally at this point or in the near future, Telsa has no ability to buy any companies such as Fiat due to their low cash position of a measly $214.42M for a $10.5 billion+ company. We strongly believe that Tesla can not make it big till they are able to truly solve the problem of lack of any major charging infrastructure in the USA, or any other major markets for that matter which they are looking to make it big in. Our main thesis is that Tesla lacks fundamental infrastructure in charging and that until an outside player will finance such systems, Tesla will be relegated as an impractical second tier player. There is simply not enough demand for these products at these prices and not enough infrastructure:

“the electric vehicle business is a little premature at the moment,” says Andrew Frank, a University of California, Davis, professor of mechanical and aeronautical engineering, adding that the main reason for this is the lack of a sufficient charging infrastructure and an unclear plan for who will end up paying for it. Frank cautions that car companies should not expect the public to pitch in. One way to kill the electric car (again) is to ask the public to invest a lot of money in the infrastructure, he says.”

The calls recently for a buyout of Fiat by Tesla are reminding us greatly of the dot com bubble when AOL (AOL) bought Time Warner and it was one of the most disastrous mergers ever. We also believe that Tesla has not enough charging infrastructure and that this problem is still Tesla’s major Achilles’ heel. We see no proof of even minor acceptance of these types of products by the American population yet:

“It’s not like people are clamoring for these vehicles,” said Rebecca Lindland, analyst with Rebel Three Media, and member of a committee studying barriers to electric cars for the National Academy of Sciences. Lindland said her view that Americans “just don’t see how an electric car can fit into their lifestyle. We continue to be risk-averse in investing in new technology in our cars. Mike Van Nieuwkuyk of the research firm JD Power & Associates said more people are aware of the electric cars on the market “but there is still a low number of consumers who say they would purchase an electric car.”

As a CNN Writer recently phrased it in terms of lack of charging ability:

“Even after overlooking all the Model S’ objective blemishes …..electric vehicles lack a national infrastructure of charging points, accessible cross-country range and remain cost prohibitive for most consumers. These are major hurdles, preventing tens of millions from even considering vehicles like the Model S. Don’t feel sorry for just the electric crowd, either. ….. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are more than 5,800 electric charging stations in the United States, but just two public charging stations in North Dakota, and zero in Wyoming (Tesla plans to have a nationwide network of its so-called Supercharger stations within a couple of years). I don’t need to remind anyone that gasoline for combustion vehicles is as readily available as pasteurized milk, and still less expensive.”

We are therefore very skeptical of this so called electric car market, especially in the US where there is almost no infrastructure to be able to charge the vehicles.

It reminds us of all the optimistic calls on the so called AOL Time Warner disaster which was the one of the most disastrous or the most disastrous merger ever:

“The Internet, it was believed, was soon to vaporize mainstream media business models on the spot. America Online’s frothy stock price made it worth twice as much as Time Warner’s with less than half the cash flow.”

We believe very overly optimistic figures are being touted by Morgan Stanley (MS) – which also was one of the major underwriters of the company’s IPO and recent offerings:

“Jonas reiterates that this Tesla is valued on a 15-year DCF (future cash flow and discounts) and that its “valuation multiples do not begin to make sense until at least 2015.”

A senior editor of Edmunds recently stated the following about the lack of charging infrastructure:

“More important, said Kavanagh, is that the US electric power system cannot support large numbers of electric vehicles which need constant charging. The US power grid is not capable of supporting that,” he told AFP. “You would need a multitude of small nuclear power stations to support that recharging. Chevrolet cut production of its Volt last year amid soft demand, and is reported to be working on a less expensive version. Toyota and Honda also scaled back plans for all-electric vehicles for the US market. And Chrysler chief executive Sergio Marchionne said recently the company stands to lose $10,000 on every battery-powered Fiat 500 it sells in California.”

Morgan Stanley (overly optimistic) projections:

(click to enlarge)

In conclusion, we believe that the Better Place bankruptcy is highly relevant to two major problems Tesla still faces: lack of charging infrastructure and lack of demand. We still do not know yet that Tesla is even a real, viable company, but many investors are taking very big risks in assuming so.

With the lack of ability to have charging infrastructure yet in such a big market as the US, we are very skeptical for all the reasons above. We also think it is way too early to start comparing Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla to Lee Iocacca. Keep in mind that “Tesla has posted a net loss of more than $800 million in the past three full years combined.”

We believe that in the long term there will be trouble ahead for Tesla and its Achilles’ heel in lack of charging infrastructure. It is best summed up by the failure of the electric car company ‘Better Place’ in these words:

“Setting up and managing a chain of battery exchange stations requires a huge investment in an infrastructure, which grows in proportion to the geographical area to be covered. It can perhaps be done as a government project but for a private company this solution requires very deep pockets and investors with stamina for the long run, and the belief that the revenue will eventually cover the expenses. Shai Agassi found investors like this to begin with, but they did not last the course.”

Beware! Tesla is a bubble just waiting to burst

Beware! Tesla is a bubble just waiting to burst

By Barry Randall

Published May 30, 2013

Covestor

By Barry Randall

Congratulations to Tesla (TSLA) shareholders for the recent, astounding gains in the company’s stock. In spite of (or because of) the immense short position in Tesla shares, the stock has risen from about $54/share at the start of May to about $103 as of May 30.

Now Tesla longs are probably weighing their next move. May I make a suggestion?

SELL! Run for the hills!

TSLA data by YCharts

OK, that’s perhaps a bit dramatic, but really, it’s how I personally feel.

What has me so sure that it’s time to move on? Let’s start with the emergence of self-justifying babble from Wall Street analysts. After the company reported a better-than-expected “profit” in early May, the stock jumped well past most Tesla analysts’ price targets.

Here’s how Morgan Stanley’s Adam Jonas put it in his subsequent note to clients [emphasis mine]:

Our rating, estimates and price target are under review, pending our analysis of changes to the company’s business model, addressable market and the associated risks. Taking nothing away from the accomplishments of the Tesla team, triangulating the fundamental valuation with the share price is more challenging than for other stocks.

My translation?

Tesla stock has gone &<@!)?(*%# crazy. So much so that you can’t reasonably expect me to stretch any of the parameters in my financial model (like growth rate and gross margin) in order to justify the current price in our usual Wall Street way. Does a forward P:E ratio of 180 make Tesla stock overvalued? Of course it does! I just can’t print that in a research note. Thanks, and don’t forget to vote for me in the Institutional Investor survey.

I’m just kidding about Mr. Jonas, who by all accounts is a fine analyst. But his concerns about “triangulation” proved unsurprisingly short-lived, and just one day later, he issued another note. In it, he raised his price target from $47 to $103 (the stock was at $87.80 at the time), based on a variety of factors, such as the possibility that “pound for pound,” Tesla might have the strongest brand in the auto industry.”

This would probably come as a surprise to, say, Ferrari, whose own brand was recently voted the most powerful commercial brand in the world. Not just within the auto industry. The most powerful among all brands.

And I believe the reality distortion field extends across Wall Street. Deutsche Bank’s analyst wrote post-earnings that he was “re-assessing [the] valuation framework” in his attempt to rationalize a new, much higher price target for Tesla. Yeesh.

But I digress. My point is that I believe Tesla stock is being propelled higher by a frothy mix of unexpected profits, huge short interest and a collective amnesia that there already exists quite a few electric cars available for sale at much lower prices than Tesla’s excellent Model S.

So where does Tesla go from here? Well, it’s certainly possible for the company to build a profitable business around high-end cars. This strategy served Porsche so well it was able, in 2007, to accumulate a 35% stake in the much larger Volkswagen. Alas, Porsche overplayed its hand and after unit sales dropped by 25% from 2008 to 2009, Volkswagen turned the tables and “re-structured” their way into complete ownership of Porsche.

But Tesla seems bound and determined to move down-market. CEO Elon Musk has promised that a ‘Gen 3’ mass market car is coming, “in a few years.”

Only one problem with that plan: the Gen 3 mass market car is already here. It’s called the Nissan Leaf. The base Leaf, the model S, has an MSRP of $21,300 after applicable tax credits. Is the Leaf as nice an automobile as Tesla’s proposed Gen 3 car – described by some as similar to a BMW 3-series – is likely to be? No, but that’s only because of strategic choices by Nissan, not a function of its ability to produce high end cars (e.g., Infiniti).

Good luck to Tesla competing with Nissan’s global supply chain; the Japanese automaker sold 4.9 million vehicles in 2012. Let’s see. Carlos Ghosn? Or Elon Musk? Hmmm.

There is nothing game-changing about Tesla that hasn’t already been accomplished by other automakers, in some cases several years ago and without 9-figure loans from the U.S. government. Tesla’s decision to use an 85 killowatt-hour battery pack (the Leaf’s is 24 kW-h) has resulted in an electric car with greater range. Fine. But that’s just a strategic design choice, not a competitive advantage protected by patents or trade secrets.

Electric cars all have the same virtues, like lower cost-per-mile than traditional internal combustion vehicles of comparable size and duty. But only a few electric car manufacturers have the economies of scale necessary to compete in the real, non-subsidized world. Tesla is not one of those companies today. Tomorrow? Perhaps. But not today and not soon.

Did anybody else beside me notice that after Tesla reported their first quarter earnings, estimates for 2013 and 2014 fell? No, that wasn’t highly publicized. Why let the facts get in the way of a great story?

The post Beware! Tesla is a bubble just waiting to burst appeared first on Smarter Investing

The Dark Side Of Tesla’s Masterful Short Squeeze
May 22 2013, 15:48 by: John Petersen | about: TSLA

Over the last month and a half I’ve watched in awe as Tesla Motors (TSLA) pulled off a masterful short squeeze and follow-on financing that has supporters dancing in the streets and fanboy bloggers making all manner of preposterous forecasts. Now that the dust has settled and the irrational exuberance has cooled a bit, it’s time to take a calm and objective look at some of the dark clouds that host the silver lining.

The Light and Fluffy Q1 Profit
Anybody who can read a disclosure document knows that Tesla’s Q1 net income of roughly $11 million was a fluke that’s not likely to be repeated. Tesla lost about $91 million on its principal business activity of making and selling cars. Its reported net income was solely attributable to events and payments that are unlikely to be a reliable source of recurring future revenue including:
• $68 million in ZEV credit sales;
• $17 million in GHG credit sales;
• $11 million in warrant liability reversals; and
• $7 million in foreign currency adjustments

The demand for ZEV and GHG credits arises from laws and regulations. As long as demand exceeds supply, the credits have significant value to automakers that need them. Once supply exceeds demand, however, the credits become worthless. The following 2010 graph from the Natural Resources Defense Council shows that a crossover point between ZEV credit supply and demand will occur this year. While Tesla expects to report additional credit sales in Q2 and Q3, it has clearly stated that the game will be over by Q4 because Tesla and all the other automakers that are building zero emission vehicles will saturate the ZEV credit market.

The Whispy Financing Scheme
The issue fanboy bloggers have overlooked or chosen to ignore is the negative if not disastrous income statement impact of Tesla’s new financing scheme. It’s a great deal for consumers who want to drive a Model S and can’t afford to write a check. It’s a brutal deal for stockholders because all financed vehicle deliveries will be accounted for as operating leases.
In its discussion of the financing plan, Tesla’s recent Form 10-Q says:
“As a result of the residual value guarantee, we expect to apply lease accounting to these sales which would defer the recognition of the associated revenues over time instead of full recognition at delivery.”

The layman’s translation follows.
When Tesla sells a car for cash it recognizes a $90,000 sale, deducts its cost of goods sold and reports the entire gross margin in the current period. When a new car is financed, the difference between the sale price and the residual value will be spread over the 36-month contract term along with the associated cost of goods sold. So instead of recognizing a $90,000 sale on day one, Tesla will recognize about $3,450 per quarter for a period of three years.
Just for grins, let’s assume total shipments of 5,000 cars per quarter, an average sales price of $90,000, a gross margin of 25%, and combined R&D, SG&A and interest expenses of $100 million per quarter. The column on the left is stated in thousands and shows how the revenue and expenses would be reported if all buyers paid cash. The column on the right shows how the revenue and expense will be reported if 20% of buyers take advantage of Tesla’s financing option.

If a 20% financing take rate converts a $12.5 million profit into a $9.1 million loss can you imagine the impact of a 30% to 40% financing take rate?
I can’t speak for anybody else, but a financing scheme that sells a few more cars but savages current revenues and net income doesn’t strike me as all that wondrous. I’m sure that Tesla will do its level best to draw attention to its balance sheet and cash flow statements which may look OK if Tesla can meet its ambitious cost reduction and gross margin goals, but the ugly income statement headlines will be the first thing investors see and the first thing the market responds to.

An even thornier issue arises from the magnitude of the residual value guarantee. Under the announced plan Tesla is guaranteeing a 50% residual value on the first $70,000 of a car’s price plus a 43% of any upgrades. For a $90,000 Model S-85 the residual value guarantee works out to $43,600, which strikes me as quite a stretch for an entirely new product class that has no meaningful residual value history.
I’ve heard the arguments about EVs retaining their value better than conventional vehicles despite battery degradation issues. Those arguments generally come from ideologues that are also quick to explain why EV technology will progress by leaps and bounds in coming years while prices plummet. In my mind, the two arguments are mutually exclusive and you can’t possibly have it both ways.

If the 2016 product offerings from Tesla are significantly better and cheaper than its current Model S, I have a hard time imagining anyone paying a premium price for a three-year old used car with antiquated first generation technology. Since I have a long history of changing out my computer systems every three or four years I know the pain of trying to sell the last generation so I can buy the latest upgrade.

Over the short term Tesla can assume whatever it wants with respect to resale value. When a meaningful resale market develops, as it must, Tesla’s auditors will have to rely on independent evidence of residual value instead of management’s estimates. If the residual value reality proves current estimates overly optimistic, the resulting write-downs to bring Tesla’s balance sheet accounts into line with market realities could be huge.

The Turbulent Short Squeeze
The short squeeze began in earnest on April 1st after Tesla said it would report a first quarter profit without telling anyone that the profit was all nonrecurring fluff. The total short position was 31.3 million shares. Since April 1st an astounding 358.8 million shares have traded as short sellers closed out losing trades and opened new short positions at higher prices. In a frothy market like the one we’ve seen over the last several weeks, it’s highly unlikely that the overall short position has changed significantly. The shorts have simply reloaded at a higher price.

At March 30, 2012 Tesla’s stockholders equity was $168.6 million, or roughly $1.46 per share. The recent stock offering increased net equity to $532 million, or roughly $4.45 per share. The $85 spread between net equity per share and market value per share represents prevailing expectations that Tesla will be a stellar performer on a go forward basis. As near as I can tell, those expectations do not account for the ugly reality that the ZEV and GHG credit cornucopia is darned near empty and Tesla’s magic financing scheme will savage future revenue and earnings.

The Ominous Hype Cycle
One of my favorite market behavior graphs comes from the Gartner Group and shows the typical market value performance curve for a company like Tesla that’s introducing an exciting new product to the market. Gartner calls the phenomenon the Hype Cycle. The process begins when a company emerges from the R&D phase and values climb through the early launch and glowing reports from early adopters.
Within a short period of time expectations build to a point where they become irrational. Then the little failures and disappointments start cropping up and the market starts to take a closer look at the substance behind the excitement. In most cases it’s a long downhill slide from the peak of inflated expectations.

In February of this year I wrote, “At $4 a share, Tesla would be an interesting speculative stock. At prices approaching $40 a share it’s a sucker’s bet with limited upside and unlimited risk.” Frankly I was amazed at both the strength of the short squeeze and Tesla’s ability to strike while the iron is hot to capitalize on the event. I guess it just goes to show that some suckers bets pay off, but only if the sucker is smart enough to realize that he dodged a bullet and quit while he’s ahead instead of going for the double or nothing bet.
In light of Tesla’s recent financing transaction, I have to update my prior conclusion. I now believe that Tesla would be an interesting speculative stock at a price of $10 to $15 per share. At prices in the $90 range it remains a sucker’s bet with limited upside and unlimited risk.
Disclosure: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and no plans to initiate any positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from Seeking Alpha). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

The problem with Elon Musk’s Women

One wife claims he cheated on her and her kids and now has a reality TV show about how she got screwed by Musk. Another “wife” was a bar pick-up and now claims he uses high-end Los Angeles escorts. A high end Los Angeles escort is now shopping an article and camera phone video. Another Silicon Valley “special friend” is shopping a competing tell-all interview. With one wife claiming he “picked her up in a bar” and another blogging all of his inside dark secrets, one wonders if Musk has any people sense at all. Who will win? Not Musk, apparently.

Elon Musk spends billions on research and PR companies to confirm that he is the most Interesting, Most Important Individual On Earth!

(Apologies to The Onion)

Dear Mr. Musk:

Thank you for hiring us. As you suspected, the results substantiate your theorem:

We have confirmed, as you stated, that the widely held assumptions that you are the most significant and interesting person currently inhabiting the earth are true.

Drawing from the results of a six-year study that carefully analyzed thousands of hours of your actions and conversations, the 220-page report concluded that your ideas and opinions far surpass those of the other 7.1 billion people on the planet in terms of substance, depth, and general importance to the world.

“Throughout our study, we found clear and overwhelming evidence that you are not only the most compelling member of the human race, but also the most important, and by a wide margin,” said the study’s lead author Samuel Lerman, who noted that you are also far more noteworthy than all individuals who have ever previously existed in human history. “There is a statistically significant gap between what you and the rest of humanity have to offer in terms of wit, charm, intelligence, creativity, and observational ability. Indeed, we found that the dynamic nature of your personality is of immeasurable value to society.”

“Our findings also confirm that your insights on everything from politics to entertainment to social issues to religion are the most notable and well-thought-out,” continued Lerman, adding that your viewpoints roundly trump the countless competing beliefs offered by the rest of the world’s population. “You are, in short, the only person who matters. The rest of us do not matter.”

The report stated that people crave to hear from you at all times, asserting that your thoughts are the most profound, your stories the most gripping, and your approval the most desired. The study also demonstrated that no one else alive today has anything as perceptive and as consequential to say as you do, with researchers noting that when you choose to speak you are exceedingly captivating and enjoyable to listen to in a way that no other human being could ever approach.

Furthermore, clinical observations showed that when you are not around, conversations among others invariably revert to speculation about what you are currently doing and what you would say about the discussion at hand. The report also confirmed that your words serve as a highly desired and desperately needed reprieve from the monotony and meaninglessness of what everyone else has to say.

You are the center of everything, the report added.

“We found that what other people think or experience is completely irrelevant when compared to even the most minor thoughts and experiences in your everyday life,” said Lerman, noting that only the things you see, do, say, and learn have any significance at all. “The data clearly show that your feelings are the most authentic, your experiences are the richest, and your perspectives are the most unique. Frankly, the world only wants to hear about you and your life and nothing else. Indeed, that’s what we all long for at every moment.”

The sociologist affirmed that all other humans on earth define their lives largely in relation to you and your existence, and reiterated the report’s recommendation that you continue to make your views and ideas known as loudly and frequently as possible to eliminate any lingering doubts among the global populace regarding your supreme importance.

“The evidence conclusively shows that you, and you alone, provide meaning to everyone else in your workplace, your social network, and your family, as well as to all the strangers that you interact with only momentarily each day,” said Lerman, who highlighted data indicating that others’ sense of fulfillment is derived solely from the opportunity to work, live, and exist alongside you. “Without you, these groups and individuals—as well as society in general—would just drift aimlessly, feeling empty and incomplete.”

Lerman went on to state that you were and have always been the primary figure on the planet, noting that the worth and merit of every person, institution, and cultural phenomenon on earth hinged wholly on your personal perceptions and judgments about them.

“Our research definitively proves that when you go to sleep each night, the world’s entire narrative stops, and that it then restarts again as soon as you wake up,” Lerman said. “And according to our findings, when you die, all of this—the whole universe and everything in it—will end.”

“It is scientifically indisputable that you are the single most important and fundamental being in existence,” Lerman added. “You are commensurate with the sun, the moon, the stars. In fact, you are the sum of all of these and more.”

The report summarized its results by concluding, “You, you, you, you.

The profiles that you hired us to write about how perfect you are, in all of those magazines, will pale alongside this report.”

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Did White House order “no more DOE Loans to be funded” in order to protect campaign financiers other investments?

No More DOE Advanced Auto Tech Loans Likely

Article From: Automotive Design & Production AutoBeat Group

The U.S. Dept. of Energy is not considering any further loans under its $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, even though it has agreed to allocate only about $8.4 billion so far.

A study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office notes that DOE hasn’t made a loan under the ATVM program in two years. It says most would-be applicants it interviewed believe the cost of the lengthy process, reviews and conditions place on the loan itself outweigh the benefits.

The six-year-old ATVM program has approved at least six loans to date:

$5.9 billion to Ford Motor Co. in September 2009 to upgrade factories in five states to make more fuel-efficient vehicles
$1.4 billion to Nissan North America in January 2010 to prepare its factory in Smyrna, Tenn., to make electric vehicles
$465 million to Tesla Motors Inc. in January 2010 to launch EV production at its plant in Freemont, Calif., and to set up capacity to make batteries and powertrain components for plug-ins
$529 million to Fisker Automotive Inc. in April 2010 to develop two plug-in hybrid models (DOE froze the loan early last year because Fisker didn’t meet performance targets)
$50 million to the Vehicle Production Group to develop a six-passenger, wheelchair-accessible vehicle than runs on compressed natural gas
$24 million for Tenneco Inc. in 2010 to produce emission control systems for light-duty vehicles (Tenneco withdrew its application in March 2010)

ADP
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Crony Socialism – House Committee: President Obama Used DOE Loan Money To Help Harry Reid’s 2010 Reelection Campaign – Emails Show Specific Intent of DOE spending to support Harry Reid….

Posted by sundance

For any other President, with any other media, at any other time in our nation, this story alone would lead to impeachment….. Congressional Oversight Committee has specific fact-based proof that President Obama collaborated with the Dept. Of Energy to steer green energy/stimulus funding money into Nevada to support Harry Reid’s 2010 election. They openly admit as such.

WASHINGTON – President Obama claims that political considerations did not influence the Energy Department’s green energy loan program, but newly-released internal emails show that his administration subsidized Nevada companies in order to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., win his 2010 reelection campaign.
And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” Obama said last week when asked about the green companies that have gone bankrupt despite receiving taxpayer support.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released DOE emails today that compromise Obama’s position on two counts: one, the emails show that Obama himself was involved in approving loans; two, DOE officials were keenly aware of the political interests at stake, as they regarded the loans as a way for the White House to help Reid by giving him a way to brag about bringing federal money into Nevada.

Messages from late in 2010 demonstrate that DOE officials were concerned that President Obama’s personal desire to get DOE loans approved was putting tax payer money at risk.

“I am growing increasingly worried about a fast track process imposed on us at the POTUS level based on this chaotic process that we are undergoing,” Loan Program Office Senior Credit Advisor Jim McCrea wrote to loan program executive director Jonathan Silver in October 2010. “[B]y designing the fast track process and having it approved at the POTUS level (which is an absolute waste of his time!) it legitimizes every element and it becomes embedded like the 55% recovery rate which also was imposed by POTUS.”

Silver was sympathetic to McCrea, but said it was too late to change course. “While I might agree with you intellectually, that is not where we are,” he wrote back. “Let’s finish this process and get back to business.”

By that point, McCrea might have regretted the political interest in the loan program, but he was quite happy about it only months earlier.

In December, 2009, McCrea forwarded one of his colleagues an article about how Reid would struggle in the 2010 campaign along with a comment on how it might affect the DOE loan program.

“Reid may be desperate,” McCrea wrote. “WH may want to help. Short term considerations may be more important than longer term considerations and what’s a billion anyhow?” That’s a troubling closing question given that the DOE lost over half-a-billion dollars on one company when Solyndra went bankrupt.

In that same message, McCrea also speculated that, in light of Reid’s campaign struggles, “there may be an opportunity to move several transactions simultaneously, allowing LGPO to finish with a trifecta!”

A May 2010 email shows that Reid requested a meeting with Jonathan Silver — the Obama bundler who resigned his post at DOE after the Solyndra bankruptcy — to discuss green energy projects in Nevada.

Silver interpreted Reid’s request in light of the campaign. “Reid is constantly hit at home for not bringing in the federal dollars,” he wrote. Silver’s task, according to the DOE memo prepared for his meeting, was to assure Reid that “we anticipate a good number of projects to be approved in the coming months.”

President Obama claims that political considerations did not influence the Energy Department’s green energy loan program, but newly-released internal emails show that his administration subsidized Nevada companies in order to help Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., win his 2010 reelection campaign.

“And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” Obama said last week when asked about the green companies that have gone bankrupt despite receiving taxpayer support.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released DOE emails today that compromise Obama’s position on two counts: one, the emails show that Obama himself was involved in approving loans; two, DOE officials were keenly aware of the political interests at stake, as they regarded the loans as a way for the White House to help Reid by giving him a way to brag about bringing federal money into Nevada.

Messages from late in 2010 demonstrate that DOE officials were concerned that President Obama’s personal desire to get DOE loans approved was putting tax payer money at risk.

“I am growing increasingly worried about a fast track process imposed on us at the POTUS level based on this chaotic process that we are undergoing,” Loan Program Office Senior Credit Advisor Jim McCrea wrote to loan program executive director Jonathan Silver in October 2010. “[B]y designing the fast track process and having it approved at the POTUS level (which is an absolute waste of his time!) it legitimizes every element and it becomes embedded like the 55% recovery rate which also was imposed by POTUS.”

Silver was sympathetic to McCrea, but said it was too late to change course. “While I might agree with you intellectually, that is not where we are,” he wrote back. “Let’s finish this process and get back to business.”

By that point, McCrea might have regretted the political interest in the loan program, but he was quite happy about it only months earlier.

In December, 2009, McCrea forwarded one of his colleagues an article about how Reid would struggle in the 2010 campaign along with a comment on how it might affect the DOE loan program.

“Reid may be desperate,” McCrea wrote. “WH may want to help. Short term considerations may be more important than longer term considerations and what’s a billion anyhow?” That’s a troubling closing question given that the DOE lost over half-a-billion dollars on one company when Solyndra went bankrupt.

In that same message, McCrea also speculated that, in light of Reid’s campaign struggles, “there may be an opportunity to move several transactions simultaneously, allowing LGPO to finish with a trifecta!”

A May 2010 email shows that Reid requested a meeting with Jonathan Silver — the Obama bundler who resigned his post at DOE after the Solyndra bankruptcy — to discuss green energy projects in Nevada.

Silver interpreted Reid’s request in light of the campaign. “Reid is constantly hit at home for not bringing in the federal dollars,” he wrote. Silver’s task, according to the DOE memo prepared for his meeting, was to assure Reid that “we anticipate a good number of projects to be approved in the coming months.”

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee notes that “throughout 2010 LPO emails indicate that projects in Nevada were prioritized because they were ‘high profile,’ ‘tied to larger events,’ or because they had Senator Reid’s support.”

Nevada Geothermal received a $98.5 million loan guarantee. Solar Reserve, another Nevada project included Solyndra investors among it’s board, received a $737 million loan guarantee (after Solyndra went bankrupt). LS Power Associations, which used to be known as SWIP, received a $343 million loan guarantee from DOE. (Silver specifically asked for information about the SWIP project as he prepared to meet with Reid.)

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Another Obama bundler benefits from DOE loan

By JOEL GEHRKE

Abound Solar, given a $400 million Department of Energy (DOE) loan guarantee for a project expected to create 1200 permanent jobs, receives private financial backing through an investment firm founded by a fundraising bundler for President Obama.

The Sunlight Foundation notes that Bohemian Companies, which was founded by billionaire and Obama bundler Pat Stryker, participated with other companies in the “second institutional equity round of financing” in 2008 for Abound Solar, which recieved $104 million total through that round of financing.

One year after Bohemian invested in Abound, and a year before the DOE granted a loan guarantee, Stryker visited the White House. “The White House did not confirm that the visitor was the Pat Stryker in question and did not provide details about the meeting,” Sunlight says.

When the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked about meetings with George Kaiser (an Obama bundler and financer for Solyndra,which also received a DOE loan guarantee), he indicated that no discussions of the loan program ever took place.

Recently-released emails from Kaiser show that he did discuss Solyndra with White House officials, despite earlier denials.

MONEYHow Investors May Be Getting Fooled by Buybacks
NEW YORK March 11, 2014 (AP)
By BERNARD CONDON AP Business Writer

If you’re puzzled why the U.S. stock market has risen so fast in a slow-growing economy, consider one of its star performers: DirecTV.

The satellite TV provider has done a great job slashing expenses and expanding abroad, and that has helped lift its earnings per share dramatically in five years. But don’t be fooled. The main reason for the EPS gain has nothing to do with how well it runs its business. It’s because it has engaged in a massive stock buyback program, halving the number of its shares in circulation by purchasing them from investors.

Companies have been spending big on buybacks since the 1990s. What’s new is the way buybacks have exaggerated the health of many companies, suggesting through EPS that they are much better at generating profits than they actually are. The distortion is ironic. Critics say the obsessive focus on buybacks has led companies to put off replacing plant and equipment, funding research and development, and generally doing the kind of spending needed to produce rising EPS for the long run.

“It’s boosted the stock market and flattered earnings, but it’s very short term,” says David Rosenberg, former chief economist at Merrill Lynch, now at money manager Gluskin Sheff. He calls buybacks a “sugar high.”

Over the past five years, 216 companies in the S&P 500 are just like DirecTV: They are getting more of a boost in EPS from slashing share count than from running their underlying business, according to a study by consultancy Fortuna Advisors at the request of The Associated Press. The list of companies cuts across industries, and includes retailer Gap, supermarket chain Kohl’s, railroad operator Norfolk Southern and drug distributor AmerisourceBergen.

The stocks of those four have more than tripled, on average, in the past five years.

Companies insist that their buybacks must be judged case by case.

“The vast majority of our shareholders are sophisticated investors who not only use EPS growth but other important measures to determine the success of our company,” says Darris Gringeri, a spokesman for DirecTV.

But Fortuna CEO Gregory Milano says buybacks are a waste of money for most companies.

“It’s game playing — a legitimate, legal form of manufacturing earnings growth,” says Milano, author of several studies on the impact of buybacks. “A lot of people (focus on) earnings per share growth, but they don’t adequately distinguish the quality of the earnings.”

So powerful is the impact, it has turned what would have been basically flat or falling EPS into a gain at some companies over five years. That list includes Lockheed Martin, the military contractor, Cintas, the country’s largest supplier of work uniforms, WellPoint, an insurer, and Dun and Bradstreet, a credit-rating firm.

It’s not clear investors are worried, or even aware, how much buybacks are exaggerating the underlying strength of companies. On Friday, they pushed the Standard and Poor’s 500 stock index to a record close, up 178 percent from a 12-year low in 2009.

“How much credit should a company get earning from share buybacks rather than organic growth?” asks Brian Rauscher, chief portfolio strategist at Robert W. Baird & Co, an investment company. “I think the quality of earnings has been much lower than what the headlines suggest.”

And it could get worse.

Companies in the S&P 500 have earmarked $1 trillion for buybacks over the next several years. That’s on top of $1.7 trillion they spent on them in the previous five years. The figure is staggering. It is enough money to cut a check worth $5,345 for every man, women and child in the country.

There is nothing necessarily nefarious or wrong about buybacks per se. It doesn’t seem that managements are trying to cover up a poor job of running their businesses. Even without factoring in a drop in share counts, earnings in the S&P 500 would have risen 80 percent since 2009.

The problem is that many investors are pouring money willy-nilly into companies doing buybacks as if they are always a good thing, and at every company.

A fund that tracks companies cutting shares the most, the PowerShares Buyback Achievers Portfolio, attracted $2.2 billion in new investments in the last 12 months. That is nine times what had been invested at the start of that period, according Lipper, which provides data on funds.

For their part, the companies note there are all sorts of reasons to like them besides EPS.

WellPoint points out that it has increased its cash dividend three times since 2011, a big draw for people looking for income. Cintas says that it’s timed its buybacks well, buying at a deep discount to stock price today. And DirecTV says investors judge it also by revenue and cash flow, both of which are up strongly.

What’s more, companies seem to genuinely believe their shares are a bargain and they’d be remiss for not buying, though their record of choosing the right time is poor.

The last time buybacks were running so high was 2007, right before stocks fell by more than half.

There are signs the next $1 trillion in buybacks for S&P 500 companies could also prove ill-timed. Stocks aren’t looking so cheap anymore. After a surge of nearly 30 percent last year, the S&P 500 is trading at 25 times its 10-year average earnings, as calculated by Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Shiller of Yale. That is much more expensive than the long-term average of 16.5.

Many investors assume shrinking shares automatically make remaining shares more valuable. The math is seductive. A company that has $100 in earnings and 100 shares will report $1 in earnings per share. But eliminate half the shares and the same $100 is spread over 50 shares, and EPS doubles to $2.

But that doesn’t make the shares more valuable.

Shares aren’t just a claim on short-term earnings. They are an ownership stake in an entire company, including R&D programs and its capital stock — the plants, equipment and other assets needed to boost productivity long into the future. Critics say the lavish spending on buybacks has “crowded out” spending on such things, which is at its weakest in decades.

“It’s just like your car depreciating or your home depreciating — you have to invest,” says Gluskin Sheff’s Rosenberg, “The corporate sector has barely preventing the capital stock from becoming obsolete.”

One result: U.S. productivity, or output per hour, increased just 0.5 percent last year, a pitiful performance. It has grown by an average 2 percent a year since 1947.

If not reversed, history suggests stocks will suffer. In a 2010 study, Fortuna’s Milano found that stocks of companies that spent the most on buybacks vastly underperformed stocks of those that spent the least on them — at least over five years.

It’s unclear whether the kind of investor who dominates stock trading now cares about the long-term, though. Buybacks are one of the few sure-fire ways to push a stock higher in the short term, and investors these days are very short term.

They “don’t care what happens in three or five years,” laments Rauscher, the Baird strategist. “The market has become less of an investor culture, more of a trading one.”

Concerning your May 31 editorial (“Some clean energy bets pay off nicely”) on Tesla Motors paying off the government loan:

In 2010, Tesla was awarded a milestone-based loan, requiring matching private capital obtained via public offering, by the Department of Energy as part of the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Loan Program. This program was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2008, and then awarded under the Obama administration in the years that followed.

The loan payment was made using a portion of the approximately $1 billion in funds raised in the previous weeks concurrent offerings of common stock and convertible senior notes.

According to a May 8 USA Today report by James R. Healey and Fred Meier, Tesla made a first-quarter profit of $11 million on revenues of $562 million. But Tesla gets government zero-emission-vehicle (ZEV) credits for each car it builds, credits that can then be auctioned to other automakers to offset their non-zero-emission vehicles. The company income from sales of ZEVs came to about $68 million in the quarter, or 12 percent of revenue.

So, if you take away the ZEVs, Tesla lost $57 million. It sounds to me like the first-quarter profit allowed Tesla to make a stock offering to which the government loan was paid from. The profit was from government money in the way of ZEVs. Would the stock sale have been as good if Tesla had shown a $57 million loss?

It’s interesting how you tied Bush to the failed Solyndra loan and President Obama to the Tesla loan, when in fact the Obama administration made both loans.

Tom Wimberly

Bakersfield

Cornell University Says Tesla Batteries Are Failed in Technology and Plans

By Ronald D. White

Just three days after Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk unveiled plans to greatly accelerate the rollout of his company’s coast-to-coast fast charger network, an expert in a competing technology was saying wait a minute, not so fast.

Paul F. Mutolo, director of external partnerships at the Energy Materials Center at Cornell University, said that he didn’t think that Tesla’s fast charge claims, or its batteries, would hold up under scrutiny.

Mutolo said it was encouraging to see Musk going after the alternative-fuel infrastructure problem “in a meaningful way.”

Electric car comparison test: EV specifications

But Mutolo added, “That said, the consumer should be wary of two things, hype and safety.”

Mutolo said it wasn’t likely that a driver would get more than 140 miles out of a 20-minute charge, and only that far if they were traveling less than 50 miles an hour.

“The numbers don’t add up,” Mutolo said.

On Friday, Musk had said that his supercharger network would soon allow cross-country travel from New York to Los Angeles — free of charge, so to speak — for drivers of the Tesla Model S sedan, which starts at about $70,000.

The super-charging stations are about 10 times faster than other available electric vehicle charging stations.

Mutolo also said that current lithium ion technology wouldn’t safely allow such a powerful charge.

“It could potentially catch on fire. Not a good idea,” Mutolo said.

It should be said here that Mutolo is a hydrogen fuel cell chemist, a competing technology.

Musk has made no secret of his disdain for hydrogen fuel cell technology powering the nation’s cars, once saying hydrogen “makes no sense” for powering cars.

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Musk and battery industry funded shill group “Plug-In America” tried to promote lies to cover the VC’s investment in Tesla.

They exist to push out fake, biased, slanted media hype which supports A123, Exide, Enerdel and other bankrupt battery companies which the Silicon Valley cartel invested in and bribed Congress to only support.

Tammy Olay
Denver, CO

Is SolarCity’s use of Tesla batteries unsafe for homes and for Solarcity?

Washington, DC – Solarcity has announced that they will be using Tesla’s lithium
ion battery systems for their energy systems. Engineers are wondering if this is
a good idea in light of the extensive numbers of lithium ion fires that have
taken place, with little or no stimulation.

Lithium ion Apple tablets and cell phones have exploded into flames and burned
down the structures they were in as documented when you search the phrase: “ipad air explodes”.

Authorities in Sugar Land, Texas, ruled that the Fisker Karma parked in the
attached garage of a newly built home was the origin of a fire in 2012 that
completely destroyed the car as well as the garage and a portion of the house,
causing hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage. The owner and his
family escaped safely. The batteries were the same kind of lithium ion batteries
used in the Tesla and now intended to be used by SolarCity.

This video shows another one just blowing up in flames for no good reason:

Aug 13, 2012 … Yet another Fisker Karma has gone up in smoke, making this the second … A Fisker Karma driver from Woodside, California parked his hybrid at the ….. is an intercooler coupler blowing off and making a sound like a gunshot.

Is this a way for Tesla to engage in “battery dumping” to try to get rid of their dog lithium ion cells by booking a sale to their own company? (Musk owns SolarCity too)

Emery- hh

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TESLA SUCKING: TOO MUCH ENERGY

Life With Tesla Model S: Even After Update, Vampire Draw Remains

By David Noland Nov 25, 2013

The Tesla Model S, for all its technical and design artistry, has a dirty little secret: the car has a substantial appetite for kilowatt-hours even when turned off and parked.

Since the Model S was introduced in 2012, this “vampire” power drain from the cars sold so far has consumed roughly 15 gigawatt-hours of electric energy, nearly a day’s output for a mid-size nuclear power plant. It’s enough wasted energy to drive the cars 50 million miles.

2013 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan [photo by owner David Noland]

2013 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan [photo by owner David Noland]

After nine months of promises to fix it, Tesla finally sent out a software update a week ago to the Model S fleet that it claims “significantly reduces power usage when (the car is) shut down.”

But based on a week’s worth of measurements on my 60-kWh Model S, I’ve concluded that the new software is only mildly effective.

As far as I can tell, the vampire’s fangs are still sharp.

Wasted power

Shortly after taking delivery of my Model S last February, I noticed that I would typically lose 10-15 miles of indicated range overnight. On average, I was losing 23 miles of indicated range every 24 hours.

But indicated-range numbers can be quirky, so I asked an electrical engineer friend to cobble together a kilowatt-hour meter. Using the meter, I measured my vampire power drain at about 4.5 kilowatt-hours per day.

That’s the equivalent of three 60-watt light bulbs burning 24/7. It was enough energy to drive about 13 miles per day–almost 5,000 miles a year.

However you measured it, the Model S vampire was a voracious beast.

Why the Model S?

The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf, the other two best-selling electric cars in the U.S., have essentially zero vampire loss. As far as I know, so do all the other electric cars on the market.

2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2013 Tesla Model S [photo: David Noland]

2011 Chevrolet Volt and 2013 Tesla Model S [photo: David Noland]

So what’s the problem with the Model S?

According to Tesla, the car needs a constant flow of power to keep its computers and systems switched on 24/7, ready to boot up instantly when the driver gets into the car.

It’s a popular myth among Model S owners that much of the vampire power goes to keep the battery warm during cold nights. This is simply not true.

According to Tesla, there is no thermal management of the Model S battery when the car is turned off and not charging–no matter how cold it gets.

We can’t help but notice that General Motors and Nissan seem to have figured out a way to make their cars start up instantly without a similar 24/7 power drain. Odd that a multibillion-dollar company in the heart of Silicon Valley couldn’t figure out a way to do that, too.

Complex history

Ironically, the Model S had very little vampire drain when it was first introduced.

My owner’s manual is based on the original software in the car. “When you’re not driving Model S, the Battery discharges very slowly to power the onboard electronics,” it purrs reassuringly. “On average the battery discharges at a rate of 1 percent per day.”

2013 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan [photo by owner David Noland]

2013 Tesla Model S electric sport sedan [photo by owner David Noland]

Unfortunately, the “sleep mode” software in those early cars triggered all sorts of glitches in the car’s other systems. Eventually, the problems became so persistent that Tesla simply disabled the sleep mode.

With sleep taken away, the vampires came out to play. And instead of draining 1 percent every 24 hours, the Model S battery suddenly began losing 5 or 6 percent of its charge every day. (In the case of 60-kWh cars like mine, it’s closer to 7 or 8 percent.)

Last March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk addressed the vampire/sleep-mode issue in a meeting with Norwegian Model S buyers in Oslo. Musk promised that a new sleep mode would reduce vampire losses to a mere 0.2 percent–an insignificant 170 watt-hours–per day.

Deadline missed

And, he said, the new sleep-mode software would be installed by the time the Model S was introduced in Norway–then set for July.

It didn’t happen. And the backtracking began almost immediately.

Later that spring, a Tesla owner’s hot-line rep told me the new sleep mode would be introduced in two phases: a preliminary software update that would cut the vampire drain in half by summer, followed by Musk’s promised total solution before the end of the year.

But as the summer progressed, several software updates came along, with nary a hint of a sleep mode.

Early bugs

Finally, in August, new cars began rolling off the production line with software update 5.0, which contained the long-awaited vampire-slayer, among other improvements. Tesla made no claims about how much energy would be saved, but one electric-car news site, without citing its sources, put the vampire reduction at 50 to 75 percent.

Unfortunately, update 5.0 proved to have serious bugs in some of its other features, particularly the GPS system. It was sent out to only a few cars in the field. (Mine was not one of them.)

In October, an improved version, update 5.6, was rolled out, again to a limited number of cars in the field. (Again, not mine.)

Finally, in mid-November, my car was updated remotely by the factory with version 5.8, apparently along with the entire fleet of Model S cars then on the road.

(Version 5.8 replicated all of the updates in 5.6, including the anti-vampire mode, and also disabled the high-speed “crouch” feature on cars with air suspension, apparently to reduce the car’s susceptibility to damage from road debris. But that’s an entirely different story.)

I was ecstatic. Free at last–or at least 50 to 75 percent free at last– from the fangs of the loathsome beast!

Not so fast

Unfortunately, it appears as if the vampire-slayer software is only mildly effective, at best.

The first night after downloading update 5.8, I lost 6 miles of range overnight, equal to a rate of 16 lost miles for a full day. After six nights, I was averaging 15 indicated miles lost per day. That’s about 35 percent less than the comparable figure (23 miles) from my tests last spring.

But indicated miles, subject to the vagaries of temperature and algorithm, don’t tell the whole story. Only a kilowatt-hour meter can give an accurate figure.

So far I’ve run three overnight tests with the kWh meter. For each test, I charged the car up in the evening to its usual selected level (In my case, about 80 percent). Then I removed the charge plug. I allowed the car to sit unplugged overnight and on into the next day, until I needed to drive it. (Typically a span of 12 to 24 hours.)

Before driving it, I plugged it back in to top off the vampire-depleted battery back to its original level. Then I checked the kWh-meter.

Test results

The three tests showed vampire losses of 2.3 kWh in 17 hours, 1.9 kWh in 23 hours, and 4.2 kWh in 18 hours. Total vampire power lost was 8.4 kWh in 58 hours.

That’s an average of 3.5 kWh per day–roughly 25 percent lower than the losses I measured previously.

I can’t explain the wide variation in the vampire draw over the three tests. Clearly, more than three tests will be required to come up with an accurate figure.

But it’s clear to me that the new vampire-slayer software is pretty weak stuff.

It’s better than nothing, I suppose. A 25-percent improvement means that the 20,000 Model S cars now on the road will only waste about 70 megawatt-hours of power a day, down from 90 MWh.

And it means that Musk’s anti-vampire prediction has turned out to be one-quarter true in twice the time.

Update 6.0, anyone?

BAY AREA FREEDOM POWERPOINT SLIDES SCRIPT-
TOM DOLAN- Fremont, CA

Let’s take a look:

HERE IS HOW MANY PEOPLE FIRST HAD ACCESS TO DOE FUNDING:

AND HERE IS WHERE THE TWO BIGGEST DOE TAXPAYER AWARDS WENT:
(Show satellite map of USA)

OH LOOK- TESLA AND SOLYNDRA USED TAXPAYER MONEY TO BUILD AND TAKEOVER BUILDINGS THAT ARE ONLY A FEW BLOCKS FROM EACH OTHER..HMMMM
(Show satellite map of Fremont area with Tesla and Solyndra next to each other)

WHY WOULD SOLYNDRA HAVE TO BUILD THE MOST EXPENSIVE AND FANCY WAREHOUSES ON EARTH?
(Show pictures of designer building fronts)

WHY WOULD TESLA GET A BUILDING NEXT DOOR THAT THEY BARELY USE, FIRE ALL THE PEOPLE AND ABANDON MOST OF THE EQUIPMENT?
(Show BEFORE and AFTER Tesla NUMMI Photos)

HERE IS A PUBLISHED QUOTE FROM ELON MUSK, THE HEAD OF TESLA, KNOCKING THE NUMMI PLANT AND SAYING WHY IT IS A WORTHLESS BUILDING FOR CAR MANUFACTURING.
(Show Quote on screen)

…AND HERE IS MUSK MOVING INTO THAT SAME BUILDING LOOK WHO HE IS SHAKING HANDS WITH.
(Show Photos)

BOY THEY SURE MADE THE VALUE OF THE LAND AND FOLLOW-ON LEASES GO UP? HUH?
(Show MLS Images and contracts)

HERE ARE SOME PEOPLE THAT WORKED AT THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA AND SOME SENATORS OFFICES WHILE THESE DEALS WERE BEING MADE. LET’S LOOK AT WHERE THEY WORK NOW:
(Show slide of names, faces and positions)

ISN’T THAT INTERESTING?

HERE IS A LIST OF ALL OF THE PAST, CURRENT AND ASSOCIATED LAND AND LEASE HOLDERS. SEE ANY INTERESTING CONNECTIONS?
(Show chart on screen)

HEY WHICH SENATOR PRESIDED OVER THOSE DEALS AND THE OPENINGS OF THOSE WAREHOUSES?
(Show Senator)

HMMMMM.. NOW WHICH SENATOR HAD A HUSBAND WHO MADE MONEY OFF OF THOSE REAL ESTATE DEALS?
(Show Husband and logos)

HMMMMMM?

————————————————
Investigations and lawsuits are also underway regarding Tesla’s Downey, California, San Jose, California and New Mexico Real Estate issues.

Roger Horn
Mountain View, CA

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Can you spell CBRE?

DS- LAT

Friend of Tesla staffer killed in plane crash releases insider notes to press that deceased Tesla worker was compiling for book. The associate has been releasing parts of the book to selected press but confirms that a full book deal is now in final negotiations.

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3 Tesla workers die when plane hits N. Calif. home

BROOKE DONALD and SUDHIN THANAWALA

Tesla Palo Alto Plane Crash

EAST PALO ALTO, Calif. — A twin-engine plane carrying three employees of electric car maker Tesla Motors struck a set of power lines after takeoff Wednesday and crashed into a fog-shrouded residential neighborhood, raining fiery debris over homes, sending residents running for safety and killing everyone aboard.

But the crash somehow caused no injuries or deaths on the ground despite a wing slamming into a home where a day care center operated. The seven people inside the house, including an infant, all escaped moments before the home went up in flames.

Menlo Park Fire Chief Harold Schapelhouman said the Cessna 310 either struck a 100-foot electrical tower or clipped its power transmission lines and broke apart, dropping debris throughout the working-class Silicon Valley neighborhood.

Federal aviation investigators said they were looking whether foggy weather played a role in the crash.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators will be at the crash site for several days and a preliminary report will be available by next week, said Josh Kawthra, an NTSB investigator.

The city of Palo Alto said most of the city and surrounding area – about 28,000 customers – had no electricity for most of the day because of the crash.

Pacific Gas and Electric Co. officials said most homes and businesses would have their electricity restored by Wednesday evening.

A spokeswoman for Palo Alto-based Facebook Inc. said its offices were without power but the outage was not affecting the Web site. Hewlett-Packard Co.’s corporate headquarters also were dark, and employees were asked to find other places to work Wednesday, a spokeswoman said.

The crash rattled Tesla Motors, one of only a few companies producing and selling purely electric cars. The identities of the employees were not released. The plane was owned by Doug Bourn of Santa Clara, identified by a Tesla spokesman as a senior electrical engineer at the company.

“Tesla is a small, tightly knit company, and this is a tragic day for us,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a statement.

The Cessna crashed around 7:55 a.m. shortly after takeoff from the Palo Alto Airport and was bound for Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Southern California, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The crash site is a mile northwest of the airport, near Tesla’s headquarters in San Carlos.

A wing fell onto the house where a children’s day care operated, and the rest of the plane struck the front retaining wall of another house down the street before landing on two vehicles on the street, Schapelhouman said. Debris also struck two neighboring houses, he said.

Pamela Houston, an employee of the day care, said she was feeding an infant when she heard a loud boom that she initially thought was an earthquake until she “saw a big ball of fire hit the side of the house.”

Houston said she screamed to the others in the house – the owner, the owner’s husband and their three children – and the group safely escaped before the home went up in flames.

“There are not even words to describe what it felt like,” she said. “I am very thankful to God that he allowed us to get out.”

The occupants of the homes have been accounted for, although authorities can’t be completely sure of the fatality count until crews begin clearing the wreckage, Schapelhouman said.

“Either by luck or the skill of the pilot, the plane hit the street and not the homes on either side,” he added. “That saved people in this community.”

Kate McClellan, 57, said she was walking her dog when she saw a plane descend from the foggy sky and strike the tower, causing power lines to swing wildly in the air.

“It burst into flames, and then it kept flying for bit before it hit some houses and exploded,” McClellan said.

The crash comes at a difficult time for Tesla, which employs 515 people worldwide and just three weeks ago disclosed plans to hold an initial public offering of stock. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the company said its future business is dependent on the successful rollout of new vehicles.

The two-door Roadster sports car is the only product that the money-losing company currently sells, retailing for $109,000. It has sold about 1,000 since its inception, and its next vehicle – the Model S sedan – is due in showrooms in 2012. It has a base price of $57,400, although a federal tax credit could reduce the cost to less than $50,000.

Tesla has not said when specifically it plans to go public, nor has it said how much it intends to raise.